Map of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau

The main routes of talibé migration
are well known in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau. The routes shown are based on
Human Rights Watch’s interviews with talibés, marabouts, parents,
and humanitarian and government officials in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau; a 2007
quantitative study of begging children in Dakar performed by the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF), the International Labour Organization, and the World
Bank; and detailed records kept by SOS Talibé Children (SOS Crianças
Talibés) of children returned to Guinea-Bissau after running away from
daaras in Senegal.

Summary

I have to bring money, rice, and sugar each day. When I
can’t bring everything, the marabout beats me. He beats me other times
too, even when I do bring the sum.... I want to stop this, but I can’t. I
can’t leave, I have nowhere to go.–Modou S., 12-year-old talibé in Saint-Louis

The teachings of Islam are completely contrary to
sending children on the street and forcing them to beg.... Certain marabouts
have ignored this—they love the comfort, the money they receive from
living off the backs of the children.–Aliou Seydi, marabout in Kolda

At least 50,000 children attending hundreds of residential
Quranic schools, or daaras, in Senegal are subjected to conditions akin to
slavery and forced to endure often extreme forms of abuse, neglect, and
exploitation by the teachers, or marabouts, who serve as their de facto
guardians. By no means do all Quranic schools run such regimes, but many marabouts
force the children, known as talibés, to beg on the streets for long
hours—a practice that meets the International Labour Organization’s
(ILO) definition of a worst form of child labor—and subject them to often
brutal physical and psychological abuse. The marabouts are also grossly
negligent in fulfilling the children’s basic needs, including food,
shelter, and healthcare, despite adequate resources in most urban daaras,
brought in primarily by the children themselves.

In hundreds of urban daaras in Senegal, it is the children
who provide for the marabout. While talibés live in complete
deprivation, marabouts in many daaras demand considerable daily sums from
dozens of children in their care, through which some marabouts enjoy relative
affluence. In thousands of cases where the marabout transports or receives
talibés for the purpose of exploitation, the child is also a victim of
trafficking.

The Senegalese and Bissau-Guinean governments, Islamic
authorities under whose auspices the schools allegedly operate, and parents
have all failed miserably to protect tens of thousands of these children from
abuse, and have not made any significant effort to hold the perpetrators
accountable. Conditions in the daaras, including the treatment of children
within them, remain essentially unregulated by the authorities.
Well-intentioned aid agencies attempting to fill the protection gap have too
often emboldened the perpetrators by giving aid directly to the marabouts who
abuse talibés, insufficiently monitoring the impact or use of such aid,
and failing to report abuse.

Moved from their villages in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau to
cities in Senegal, talibés are forced to beg for up to 10 hours a day.
Morning to night, the landscape of Senegal’s cities is dotted with the
sight of the boys—the vast majority under 12 years old and many as young
as four—shuffling in small groups through the streets; weaving in and out
of traffic; and waiting outside shopping centers, marketplaces, banks, and
restaurants. Dressed in filthy, torn, and oversized shirts, and often barefoot,
they hold out a small plastic bowl or empty can hoping for alms. On the street
they are exposed to disease, the risk of injury or death from car accidents,
and physical and sometimes sexual abuse by adults.

In a typical urban daara, the teacher requires his
talibés to bring a sum of money, rice, and sugar every day, but little of
this benefits the children. Many children are terrified about what will happen
to them if they fail to meet the quota, for the punishment—physical abuse
meted out by the marabout or his assistant—is generally swift and severe,
involving beatings with electric cable, a club, or a cane. Some are bound or
chained while beaten, or are forced into stress positions. Those captured after
a failed attempt to run away suffer the most severe abuse. Weeks or months
after having escaped the daara, some 20 boys showed Human Rights Watch scars
and welts on their backs that were left by a teacher’s beatings.

Daily life for these children is one of extreme deprivation.
Despite bringing money and rice to the daara, the children are forced to beg
for their meals on the street. Some steal or dig through trash in order to find
something to eat. The majority suffer from constant hunger and mild to severe
malnutrition. When a child falls ill, which happens often with long hours on
the street and poor sanitary conditions in the daara, the teacher seldom offers
healthcare assistance. The children are forced to spend even longer begging to purchase
medicines to treat the stomach parasites, malaria, and skin diseases that run
rampant through the daaras. Most of the urban daaras are situated in abandoned,
partially constructed structures or makeshift thatched compounds. The children
routinely sleep 30 to a small room, crammed so tight that, particularly during
the hot season, they choose to brave the elements outside. During Senegal’s
four-month winter, the talibés suffer the cold with little or no cover,
and, in some cases, even a mat to sleep on.

Many marabouts leave their daara for weeks at a time to
return to their villages or to recruit more children, placing talibés as
young as four in the care of teenage assistants who often brutalize the
youngest and sometimes subject them to sexual abuse.

In hundreds of urban daaras, the marabouts appear to
prioritize forced begging over Quranic learning. With their days generally consumed
with required activity from the pre-dawn prayer until late into the evening,
the talibés rarely have time to access forms of education that would
equip them with basic skills, or for normal childhood activities and
recreation, including the otherwise ubiquitous game of football. In some cases,
they are even beaten for taking time to play, by marabouts who see it as a
distraction from begging.

Marabouts who exploit children make little to no effort to
facilitate even periodic contact between the talibés and their parents.
The proliferation of mobile phones and network coverage into even the most
isolated villages in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau should make contact easy, but the
vast majority of talibés never speak with their families. In many cases,
preventing contact appears to be a strategy employed by the marabout.

Unfed by the marabout, untreated when sick, forced to work
for long hours only to turn over money and rice to someone who uses almost none
of it for their benefit—and then beaten whenever they fail to reach the
quota—hundreds, likely thousands, of talibés run away from daaras
each year. Many talibés plan their escape, knowing the exact location of
runaway shelters. Others choose life on the streets over the conditions in the
daara. As a result, a defining legacy of the present-day urban daara is the
growing problem of street children, who are thrust into a life often marked by
drugs, abuse, and violence.

The exploitation and abuse of the talibés occurs
within a context of traditional religious education, migration, and poverty.
For centuries, the daara has been a central institution of learning in Senegal.
Parents have long sent their children to a marabout—frequently a relative
or someone from the same village—with whom they resided until completing
their Quranic studies. Traditionally, children focused on their studies while
assisting with cultivation in the marabout’s fields. Begging, if
performed at all, was rather a collection of meals from community families.
Today, hundreds of thousands of talibés in Senegal attend Quranic schools,
many in combination with state schools, and the practice often remains centered
on religious and moral education. Yet for at least 50,000 children, including
many brought from neighboring countries, marabouts have profited from the
absence of government regulation by twisting religious education into economic
exploitation.

The forced begging, physical abuse, and dangerous daily
living conditions endured by these talibés violate domestic and
international law. Senegal has applicable laws on the books, but they are scant
enforced. Senegal is a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the
African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and all major
international and regional treaties on child labor and trafficking, which
provide clear prohibitions against the worst forms of child labor, physical
violence, and trafficking. International law also affords children the rights
to health, physical development, education, and recreation, obligating the
state, parents, and those in whose care a child finds himself to fulfill these
rights.

The state is the primary entity responsible for protecting
the rights of children within its borders, something which the government of
Senegal has failed to do. With the exception of a few modern daaras—which
are supported by the government and combine Quranic and state school
curricula—not one of the Quranic schools in Senegal is subject to any
form of government regulation. In the last decade, the government has notably
defined forced begging as a worst form of child labor and criminalized forcing
another into begging for economic gain, but this adequate legislation has so
far led to little concrete action. Rather than hold marabouts accountable for
forced begging, gross neglect, or, in all but the rarest of cases, severe
physical abuse, Senegalese authorities have chosen to avoid any challenge to the
country’s powerful religious leaders, including individual marabouts.

Countries from which a large number of talibés are sent
to Senegal, particularly Guinea-Bissau, have likewise failed to protect their
children from the abuse and exploitation that await them in many urban Quranic
schools in Senegal. The Bissau-Guinean government has yet to formally
criminalize child trafficking and, even under existing legal standards, has
been unwilling to hold marabouts accountable for the illegal cross-border
movement of children. Guinea-Bissau has also failed domestically to fulfill the
right to education—around 60 percent of children are not in its school
system—forcing many parents to view Quranic schools in Senegal as the
only viable option for their children’s education.

Parents and families, for their part, often send children to
daaras without providing any financial assistance. After informally relinquishing
parental rights to the marabout, some then turn a blind eye to the abuses their
child endures. Many talibés who run away and make it home are returned
to the marabout by their parents, who are fully aware that the child will
suffer further from forced begging and often extreme corporal punishment. For
these children, home is no longer a refuge, compounding the abuse they endure
in the daara and leading them to plan their next escapes to a shelter or the
street.

Dozens of Senegalese and international aid organizations
have worked admirably to fill the protection gap left by state authorities. Organizations
provide tens of centers for runaway talibés; work to sensitize parents
on the difficult conditions in the daara; and administer food, healthcare, and
other basic services to talibés. Yet in some cases, they have actually made
the problem worse. By focusing assistance largely on urban daaras, some aid
organizations have incentivized marabouts to leave villages for the cities, where
they force talibés to beg. By failing to adequately monitor how marabouts
use assistance, some organizations have made the practice even more profitable—while
marabouts receive aid agency money with one hand, they push their
talibés to continue begging with the other. And by treading delicately
in their effort to maintain relations with marabouts, many aid organizations
have ceased demanding accountability and have failed to report obvious abuse.

The government of Senegal has launched an initiative to
create and subject to regulation 100 modern daaras between 2010 and 2012. While
the regulation requirement in these new schools is a long-overdue measure, the
limited number of daaras affected means that the plan will have little impact
on the tens of thousands of talibés who are already living in
exploitative daaras. The government must therefore couple efforts to introduce
modern daaras with efforts, thus far entirely absent, to hold marabouts
accountable for exploitation and abuse.

Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the African Charter on
the Rights and Welfare of the Child the state is obliged to ensure that
children have access to a compulsory, holistic primary education that will
equip them with the basic skills they need to participate fully and actively in
society. In addition to supporting the introduction of modern daaras, the
government of Senegal should therefore ensure that children have the choice of
access to free primary education through state schools or other means.

Without enforced regulation of daaras and success on accountability,
the phenomenon of forced child begging will continue its decades-long pattern
of growth. If the Senegalese government wants to retain its place as a leading
rights-respecting democracy in West Africa, it must take immediate steps to
protect these children who have been neglected by their parents and exploited
and abused in the supposed name of religion.

Recommendations

To the Government of Senegal

Enforce current domestic law that criminalizes forcing
another into begging for economic gain—specifically, article 3 of Law
No. 2005-06—including by investigating and holding accountable
in accordance with fair trial standards marabouts and others who force children
to beg.

Consider amending the law to provide for a greater range
of penalties, reducing the range of punishment to include only
non-custodial sentences and prison sentences under two years, from the
present mandatory two to five years, so that punishments can be better
apportioned to the severity of exploitation.

Create a registry of marabouts who are documented by
authorities to have forced children to beg for money, or who are
convicted for physical abuse or for being grossly negligent in a
child’s care.

Enforce article 298 of the penal
code that criminalizes the physical abuse of children, with the exception
of “minor assaults,” including by investigating and holding accountable
in accordance with fair trial standards marabouts and others who
physically abuse talibés.

Amend the law to include specific reference to all forms
of corporal punishment in schools, in accordance with international law,
including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African
Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.

Amend the law to ensure that it holds responsible a
marabout who oversees, orders, or fails to prevent or punish an assistant
teacher who inflicts physical abuse on a talibé.

Enforce anti-trafficking
provisions under Law No. 2005-06, which criminalizes child trafficking in
accordance with the United Nations Trafficking in Persons Protocol.

Provide additional resources to civil and border police
units, particularly in the regions of Ziguinchor and Kolda, to enhance
their capacity to deter child trafficking.

Improve and require periodic training for police units to
ensure that they know the laws governing movements of children across
borders.

Express support, from the highest
levels of government, for the prosecution of marabouts who violate laws
against forced begging, abuse, and trafficking.

Relevant authorities within the Ministries of Interior and
Justice should monitor, investigate, and, where there is evidence,
discipline police, investigating judges, and prosecutors who persistently
fail to act on allegations of abuse and exploitation by marabouts.

Issue clear directives to the Brigade des
mineurs (Juvenile Police) to proactively investigate abuse and
exploitation, including during street patrols.

Increase police capacity,
particularly within the Juvenile Police, including through increased
staffing and equipment, in order to better enforce existing laws against
forced begging and physical abuse.

Provide adequate training to the Juvenile Police on
methods for interviewing children, and for protecting and assisting victims
of severe physical and psychological trauma, including sexual abuse.

Ensure that children, aid workers, and
others have a safe and accessible means of reporting abuse or exploitation,
including by better publicizing the state’s child-protection hotline managed
by the Centre Ginddi in Dakar, and by extending availability of hotlines
and assistance elsewhere in Senegal.

Introduce a law requiring
humanitarian workers to report to the police incidents of abuse,
exploitation, and violations of relevant laws governing the treatment of
children, including the law on forced begging.

Require all daaras to be
registered and periodically inspected by state officials.

Enact legislation setting minimum standards under which
daaras must operate, with particular attention to daaras that operate as
residential schools.

Encourage child protection authorities to collaborate
with Islamic authorities on the development of these standards, which
should include: minimum hours of study; promotion and development of the
child’s talent and abilities to their fullest potential, either within
the daaras or in another educational establishment; minimum living
conditions; the maximum number of children per Quranic teacher;
qualifications for opening a residential daara; and registration of the
daara for state inspection.

Expand the capacity and mandate of state daara inspectors
in order to improve the monitoring of daaras throughout Senegal; empower
inspectors to sanction or close daaras that do not meet standards that
protect the best interests of the child.

Direct the Juvenile Police to investigate
the extent to which sexual abuse exists in daaras throughout Senegal. Engage
talibés, marabouts, the police, parents, community authorities, and
Islamic and humanitarian organizations in establishing and publicizing
adequate protection mechanisms for children who are victims of sexual
abuse.

Task a minister with coordinating
the state response from the various ministries.

Improve statistic-keeping on the
number of talibés and Quranic teachers who come into contact with
state authorities, including: talibés who are in conflict with the
law; talibés who run away and are recovered by state authorities;
and Quranic teachers who are arrested and prosecuted for forcing another
into begging, physical abuse, or other abuses against children.

Ensure the elimination of
informal fees and other barriers to children accessing primary education
in state schools.

To the Government of
Guinea-Bissau

Enact and enforce legislation that criminalizes child
trafficking, including sanctions for those who hire, employ, or encourage
others to traffic children on their behalf, and for those who aid and abet
trafficking either in the country of origin or country of destination.

Publicly declare that forced
child begging is a worst form of child labor; follow with appropriate
legislation.

Increase the capacity of civil
and border police units, particularly in the regions of Bafatá and
Gabú, to deter child trafficking and other illegal cross-border
movements of children.

Improve and require periodic training for border units to
ensure that they know the laws governing movements of children across
borders.

Continue progress on the regulation
of religious schools. Work closely with religious leaders to devise appropriate
curricula, teacher standards, and registration and enrollment
requirements.

Ensure the elimination of
informal fees and other barriers to children accessing primary education, in
an effort to better progressively realize the right to education for the
60 percent of Bissau-Guinean children currently outside the state school
system.

To the Governments of Senegal
and Guinea-Bissau

Improve collaboration to deter the illegal cross-border
migration and trafficking of children from Guinea-Bissau into Senegal,
including through additional joint training of border and civil police.

Enter into a bilateral agreement
to:

formally harmonize legal definitions for what constitutes
the illegal cross-border movement of children;

coordinate strategies to deter the illegal cross-border
movement of children; and

facilitate the return of children who have been
trafficked, and ensure that they receive minimum standards of care and
supervision.

Collaborate with religious
leaders, traditional leaders, and nongovernmental organizations to raise
awareness in communities on the rights of the child under international
and domestic law, as well as within Islam.

To Religious Leaders,
including Caliphs of the Brotherhoods, Imams, and Grand Marabouts

Denounce marabouts who engage in the exploitation and
abuse of children within daaras.

Introduce, including during the
Friday prayer (jumu’ah), discussion of children’s
rights in Islam.

To International and National Humanitarian
Organizations

Explicitly condition funding for marabouts and daaras on
the elimination of forced begging and physical abuse, and on minimum
living and health conditions within the daara.

Improve monitoring to determine if marabouts who receive
funds are using them to achieve the prescribed goals.

Cease funding for marabouts who demonstrate a lack of
progress toward eliminating child begging, particularly those who
continue to demand a quota from their talibés or who continue to
physically abuse or neglect them.

Implement organizational policies
and codes of conduct requiring humanitarian workers to report to state
authorities incidents of abuse and violations of relevant laws governing
the treatment of children whom they directly encounter, including the 2005
law on trafficking and forced begging.

Stop returning runaway
talibés who have been victims of physical abuse or economic
exploitation to the marabout. Bring the child to state authorities so that
the Ministry of Justice can perform a thorough review of the child’s
situation and determine what environment will protect the child’s
best interests.

Focus greater efforts on
supporting initiatives in village daaras and state schools to enable
children in rural areas to access an education that equips them with the
basic skills they will need to participate fully and actively in society,
so that children do not need to move to towns and cities to access quality
education.

Increase pressure on the
government of Senegal to enforce its laws on forced begging, child abuse, and
child trafficking.

To the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery

Consider an investigation into the situation of the tens
of thousands of children in Senegal who are forced to beg by their Quranic
teachers, which appears to qualify as a practice akin to child slavery.

To the Economic Community of
West African States

Work with governments in the region to improve collective
response to child trafficking.

To the Organisation of the
Islamic Conference

Denounce the practice of forced begging and physical abuse
in Quranic schools as in conflict with the Cairo Declaration and
other international human rights obligations.

Methodology

This report is based on 11 weeks of field research in
Senegal and Guinea-Bissau between November 2009 and February 2010. During the
course of this research, interviews were conducted with 175 children; 33
religious authorities, marabouts, and imams in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau;
Senegalese and Bissau-Guinean government officials at the national and local
levels; diplomats; academics and religious historians; representatives from
international organizations, including the United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM);
representatives from national and international nongovernmental organizations, national
human rights groups, and community associations working in various ways to
assist the talibés; and some 20 families in Senegalese and
Bissau-Guinean villages who had sent their children to distant cities to learn
the Quran.

In Senegal, research was conducted in the capital, Dakar; in
the Dakar suburbs of Guédiawaye and Rufisque; in the cities of Saint-Louis,
Thiès, Mbour, and Kolda; and in villages in the region of Saint-Louis in
the north (area called the Fouta Toro, or the Fouta) and in the region of Kolda
in the south. In Guinea-Bissau, research was conducted in the capital, Bissau;
the cities of Bafatá and Gabú; as well as in villages in the
eastern regions of Bafatá and Gabú. This field research was
accompanied by an extensive literature review of publicly available and
unpublished studies on the talibés in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau
conducted by a range of international and local organizations.

Of the 175 children interviewed, 73 were interviewed during
in-depth conversations, generally about one hour in length, in one of two types
of centers that assist talibés: food and healthcare assistance centers
for current talibés; and temporary shelters that assist in the care and
repatriation of runaway talibés. These sites helped ensure a secure
environment for the children, most of whom were victims of serious abuse,
during and immediately after the time of their interview. Of the 73 children
interviewed in centers, 14 were interviewed, at the children’s request,
in small groups of between two and four children from the same daara; the other
59 interviews of children in centers were conducted individually and privately,
with only a translator and the interviewer present.

An additional 102 interviews were conducted with current
talibés living in daaras in four Senegalese cities: Dakar, Thiès,
Mbour, and Saint-Louis. These interviews normally lasted from 10 to 15 minutes
and were conducted away from their daara, generally on the street. About half
of the street interviews were conducted in small groups of between two and five
talibés, and the other half individually—depending on whether the
children were begging in a group or alone. Privacy from other people on the
street was ensured. Human Rights Watch did not interview children in or around
their own daaras in order to help protect against acts of reprisal such as
beatings by the marabout.

All interviews with talibés, marabouts, and families
were conducted with the use of an interpreter between French and one of the
main languages spoken by respective ethnic groups in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau.
The vast majority of interviews were conducted in the interviewee’s first
language—generally Pulaar, Wolof, or Creole.

The names of all current and former talibés
interviewed for this report have been withheld in order to protect their
identity and help ensure their security. The names of parents have also been
withheld, even when consent was provided, to protect the identities of their
children who remain under the care of the marabouts. The names of some
government officials and representatives of nongovernmental organizations, at
their request, have likewise been withheld.

Human Rights Watch identified and spoke with talibés,
marabouts, and families with the assistance of humanitarian organizations that
work with current and former talibés. Different local partners and
translators were used in every city and, often, in each neighborhood in which
research was conducted.

The exchange rate between the United States dollar and the
West African CFA franc (the currency used by seven West African francophone
countries as well as Guinea-Bissau) fluctuated from lows around 430 to highs
around 490 from October 2009 to March 2010. In this report, all dollar figures
use a rate of 460 CFA to the dollar.

Background

Senegal, the western-most country in continental Africa, has
a population estimated at around 12 million, about 95 percent of which is
Muslim. The largest ethnic groups in Senegal are the Wolof (approximately 43
percent of the population), Peuhl[1]
(24 percent), and Serer (15 percent). Independent from France since 1960,
Senegal’s official language according to the constitution is French,[2]
though Wolof is generally the lingua franca. Arabic is the second most
common language of literacy, even surpassing French—the language taught
in state schools—in some regions of Senegal.[3]

Development of Islam in Senegal

The first article of Senegal’s constitution formally
defines the state as secular.[4]
However, Islamic authorities, particularly through the Muslim brotherhoods that
dominate nearly all aspects of Senegalese life, wield considerable influence in
the political and economic structures of the country.

The form of Islam prevalent in Senegal draws heavily from
Sufism—a broad tradition that includes various mystical forms of Islam. The
movement began during the eighth century as a reaction to what was perceived as
the overly materialistic and worldly pursuits of many leaders and followers of
Islam. Sufi adherents are almost always members of tariqas, or
brotherhoods, and, in addition to learning the holy texts, place great
importance on following the teachings and example of a personal spiritual
guide.[5]

There are four principal Sufi brotherhoods in Senegal: the
Qadriyya, the Tijaniyya,[6]
the Muridiyya,[7]
and the Layenne. The oldest order is the Qadriyya, but the current dominant
brotherhoods are the Tijaniyya, to which approximately half of Senegal’s
Muslim population adheres, and the Muridiyya, the wealthiest and
fastest-growing, followed by some 30 percent of Senegalese.[8]

Each brotherhood maintains a strict hierarchy, led by a
caliph, a descendant of the brotherhood’s founder in Senegal, followed by
marabouts, who serve as teachers or spiritual guides for the
brotherhood’s disciples, or talibés. Marabouts wield immense
influence over their disciples: the talibé is expected to be devoted and
strictly obedient; and the marabout, for his part, is expected to provide
guidance and intercession throughout the disciple’s life.[9]
Disciples consult marabouts for guidance on a variety of everyday and major
life decisions and problems, such as family illness, a job search, and the
harvest. Marabouts themselves are organized in a hierarchy, generally based on
lineage, experience, and education. In addition, some marabouts in Senegal are
imams, the leaders of mosques.

During the early colonial period, between 1850 and 1910, the
French repressed charismatic religious leaders who, with their large
followings, the colonial administrators feared could incite rebellion.[10]
However, this served only to increase the religious leaders’ popularity.[11]
By around 1910, the French and the brotherhood leaders began to see the
political and economic benefits of adopting a more cooperative relationship. In
return for the religious leaders’ pacifying the population and accepting
colonial rule, the French relinquished to them immense profits from the
production and trade of groundnuts—one of Senegal’s most important
exports even today.[12]

Post-independence, the religious leaders’ political
and economic power continued to grow. During the presidency of Léopold
Sédar Senghor, from independence to 1980, caliphs from the main
brotherhoods issued ndiguels (religious edicts, in Wolof), guiding
followers to vote for Senghor and the ruling Socialist Party. In return,
Senghor affirmed the brotherhoods’ preeminent religious authority in
Senegal and provided them considerable economic benefits.[13]
In 1988, in hailing the efforts of Senghor’s successor, President Abdou Diouf,
to provide roads and lighting in Touba, the Mourides’ holy capital, the
Mouride caliph issued a ndiguel that equated voting for the opposition with a
betrayal of the Mouride founder.[14]
The brazenness of this ndiguel resulted in a backlash against caliphs’
overt intrusion into political life, which led subsequent caliphs to adopt a
superficially apolitical stance regarding support for a given candidate.[15]

While caliphs are nominally apolitical in today’s
Senegal, politicking by politicians and political candidates of individual marabouts
for their disciples’ votes remains an active practice in national and,
even more so, in local elections.[16]
Human Rights Watch interviewed marabouts in Dakar, Saint-Louis, Kolda, and
Mbour who stated that during the last election cycle, in 2007, politicians or
their intermediaries explicitly promised assistance in return for votes.[17]

These various forms of political courting of religious
authorities, and political involvement by religious authorities, have over the
years produced a political system in which no clear boundaries separate the
religious and civic spheres.[18]
While public expression of dissent toward the government is commonplace, the
population and government leaders appear reluctant to express any opposition to
religious leaders, an issue acknowledged by multiple government officials and
humanitarian workers.[19]
This dynamic has served to embolden those responsible for the proliferation of
forced child begging and other abuses committed by the marabouts against talibé
children.

Quranic Education prior to French Rule

The introduction of Islam in Senegal brought with it the
founding of Quranic schools, or daaras. Prior to the arrival of the
French—and even after their arrival in all but the most populous
cities—Quranic schools were the principal form of education.

The daaras in existence before French colonial rule, as
remain today, were led by marabouts, and the students were, then as now, known
as talibés. While many talibés lived at home and studied at a
daara in their village, many others were entrusted to marabouts in distant
villages. The talibés lived with the marabout at the daara, often
without any contact with their parents for several years.[20]
While both girls and boys undertook memorization of the Quran in their own
villages, it was and remains almost exclusively boys whom parents confide to the
care of marabouts.

In these traditional daaras that predominated through
independence, most marabouts were also cultivators of the land—though
their primary concern generally remained education.[21]
During Senegal’s long dry season, emphasis was generally placed on
Quranic studies. Then, during the harvest, the marabout and older
talibés would work together in the fields to provide food for the daara
for much of the year—aided by contributions from families whose
talibés did not reside at the daara and from community members through
almsgiving. While older talibés assisted in the fields, younger
talibés would remain in the daara and continue learning, either from the
marabout or an assistant.[22]

During this period, the practice of begging existed where
children lived at a residential daara and the harvest could not sustain the
daara’s food needs. Mamadou Ndiaye, a professor at the Islamic Institute
in Dakar who has studied the daara system for three decades, described how the
practice of free boarding in Senegal’s Quranic schools led to the begging
phenomenon.[23]

However, in the traditional practice, talibés
generally did not beg for money; begging was solely for food and did not take
time away from the talibés’ studies or put them on the street. Families
would donate a bowl of food for a talibé, who would then return to the
daara where all would eat as a community.[24]
The experience emphasized mastering the Quran and obtaining the highest
attainable level of Arabic. This traditional form of begging, however, bears
little resemblance to current practice in Senegal’s cities. Indeed,
Professor Ndiaye prefers to refer to these two practices using entirely
separate terms: “la quête,” or collection, for the traditional
practice; and “la mendicité,” or begging, for the
modern practice which is the subject of this report.[25]

Quranic
Education under French Rule

Despite the imposition of restrictive regulations and
sanctions, as well as strategic subsidies for daaras where French was taught,
the French authorities were unable to significantly restrict the proliferation
of Quranic schools or limit the influence of Islamic authorities over the
population.

Between 1857 and 1900, the French colonial administration tried
to limit the number of marabouts authorized to teach children the Quran, first
in the then-capital of Saint-Louis[26]
and soon after throughout the region.[27]
Correspondence between colonial leaders and the means they employed toward
their goals demonstrated the central motivations behind these efforts: first, a
desire to see the French language replace Arabic as the dominant scholarly and
common language; and, second, a fear that Islam as practiced in West Africa was
not favorable to colonial rule.[28]
One colonial administrator wrote, “We are forced to ask ourselves what
could be the utility of the study of the Quran as it is ... done in Senegal. The
results from an intellectual point of view are negative.”[29]

An 1857 order required marabouts in Saint-Louis to gain
authorization from the French governor in order to legally operate a daara. The
set of requirements for authorization—which included proof of residency,
educational certificates, and certificates of good morals—were intended
to both limit the number of daaras and put out of practice individual marabouts
whom the French believed to be hostile to their rule.[30]
The order also required that all marabouts send their students of 12 years of
age or older to evening classes at either a secular or Christian school in
order to learn French.[31]

In 1896, the French administration extended this regulation throughout
Senegal in an order that continued the use of restrictive authorization
requirements; forbade marabouts from receiving children between the ages of six
and 15 at Quranic schools during the hours of public education; and required
marabouts to obtain from all their students a certificate proving attendance at
French school.[32]
If a marabout operated a daara without authorization, or failed to comply with
the law, he could be punished with a fine and, for the first time,
imprisonment.[33]

These acts angered the population, who saw them as meddling
with their religious affairs.[34]
Most children continued to attend Quranic schools and French spread slowly. Many
marabouts continued to teach without authorization, and even those who had
authorization generally failed to comply with official requirements.[35]

In the early 20th
century, the colonial authorities continued attempts to limit the influence of
Islam and Arabic in favor of French rule and language, but changed their
approach, from the “stick” of over-regulation and punitive
sanctions, to cooperation and cash payments to marabouts who set aside two
hours a day for French instruction.[36]

In another proactive effort, the French in 1908 established
the Madrasa of Saint-Louis. A school run by the colonial authorities, its
purpose, as stated by the governor general of French West Africa, was “to
fight against the proselytizing by those [hostile] marabouts and to improve the
current, degraded teaching of Arabic through forming an official corps of
marabouts.”[37]
Scholarships were awarded with a distinct focus on attracting the sons of
leading and influential families. The goal was to train future Senegalese
political and religious leaders who would be more inclined to support the
French.[38]
The Madrasa’s curriculum included French, traditional school subjects,
Arabic, and the Quran—prioritized in that order.[39]

Subsidies for Quranic schools that taught French and the
training of religious and political leaders expanded the reach of the French
language and French colonial authority. However, in most regions, parents
continued to prefer traditional Quranic schools.[40]
Throughout the entire colonial period, the traditional model of the
daara—in which children assisted with the harvest and collected meals,
but did not beg for money and instead spent the vast majority of their time on
mastering the Quran—remained most prevalent. Ultimately unsatisfied with
the results of the “carrot” approach as well, the colonial
administration abandoned such attempts. A 1945 order stated that Quranic
schools were not to be considered educational schools and were not to be given
subsidies under any circumstances.[41]

Because the French authorities’ efforts were so
explicitly intended to limit the influence of Islam and religious leaders, they
have had a long-lasting impact on later attempts to regulate the daaras: nearly
all proposed or enacted regulations have been immediately interpreted by
religious leaders as anti-Quranic education and anti-Islam. When a number of
marabouts in the post-independence period began to use Quranic education as a
cover for the exploitation of talibés, the Senegalese government’s
immediate and continued failure to challenge religious authorities on this
point allowed an ever-worsening system of exploitation and abuse to develop.

Quranic Education Post-Independence: Rising Tide of Forced
Begging

In the post-independence period since 1960, village-based
daaras have increasingly given way to urban daaras, in which the practice of
forced child begging has become more and more prevalent. Immediately following
independence, village-based daaras remained the most common and were the sole
option for a religious education, which was not provided by the secular state
schools, still widely referred to as “French schools.” Then, severe
droughts in the late 1970s brought an influx of migrants, including marabouts,
from Senegal’s villages to its cities.[42]
Unable to make use of the traditional forms of support as were available in the
villages, many marabouts began forcing talibés to beg. By the 1980s,
forced child begging was ubiquitous in Senegal’s cities, with
profitability attracting numerous unscrupulous marabouts.[43]
At present, the practice of child begging in Senegal is almost wholly linked to
residential Quranic schools: a 2007 study by the United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Labour Organization (ILO),
and the World Bank found that 90 percent of children begging in Dakar and its
suburbs were talibés.[44]

While the government has categorically failed to respond to
the known prevalence of exploitation and abuse of children associated with
residential Quranic schools, it has made mild, unsuccessful attempts at larger
reform of the education system. In an attempt to attract some families to the
state education system, the Senegalese government introduced at independence
the option of Arabic study in state schools,[45]
but religious instruction was explicitly banned in state schools until 2004.
Thousands of Senegalese families who prioritized religious education continued
to send their children to daaras, contributing to the proliferation of Islamic
associations and Arabic schools.[46]

At the onset of urban migration in the 1970s, many marabouts
ran seasonal daaras, where marabouts and talibés would live in the city
during the dry season and then return to the village to prepare for the
harvest.[47]
Then, as the profits obtainable from forced begging and the greater comforts of
urban life became apparent, most marabouts remained in the cities all year.
Professor Ndiaye explained these developments, and the negative effect that
forced begging has had on children’s Quranic education:

Over time, the marabouts started to stay in the cities all
year—they weighed the pros and cons and thought it was more favorable to
stay in Dakar. Some marabouts became more at ease in Dakar—there was
coffee, rice, fish, clean water. Why return to the village, where they had to
work the land for long hours, when [in the city] a child comes daily with
money, sugar, and rice? As a result, some marabouts reduced the hours of
Quranic learning, because the longer the child remains in the daara learning,
the less opportunity he has to bring money. The longer he stays outside the
daara, the more the marabout can maximize the money that the talibés
bring.[48]

Emphasis on Almsgiving

Academics and Senegalese humanitarian
officials working with the talibés noted how almsgiving—both
a central tenet of the Islamic faith and a widely practiced custom in
Senegal—has had the effect of contributing to the entrenchment of the
talibé problem, and as a result, the exploitation and abuses associated
with child begging. Professor Ndiaye described this phenomenon:

In Senegal, people love to give alms.... People here need a
population to give to. Disciples go to their marabout at crucial times—for
example, when they want an important job—and the marabout will say that
if they want to achieve this, they must give 50 CFA (US$0.11) to 10 talibés.[49]

This should not be construed to suggest that most Senegalese
are in favor of the exploitative and abusive practices carried out against the
talibés as detailed in this report. Rather, the attendant need felt by
many Senegalese to give alms, coupled with the widespread presence of begging
talibés, has at once been exploited by many marabouts and contributed to
the normalization of the practice throughout Senegal.

Types of Quranic Schools Present Today in Senegal

Village Daara

A form present in almost every Senegalese village,
it generally preserves the traditional focus on memorizing the Quran. In many
village daaras, children live at home with their families, attending state
schools in the morning and the daara in the afternoon, or vice versa.
Children residing at the daara assist the marabout with cultivation during
the harvest and with other tasks such as the collection of wood and water.

Seasonal Daara

Almost nonexistent now, particularly in Dakar,
marabouts and talibés live in cities during the dry season, with
talibés generally forced to beg for money. During the rainy season, to
prepare for the harvest, marabouts return to the village, often with the
talibés who help cultivate.

Urban Daara with Few or No Talibés Residing
at the Daara

Frequently led by imams at daaras connected with
mosques, these daaras are overwhelmingly comprised of children who reside
with their families in the surrounding neighborhood. Most of these children
also attend state school. There is generally no begging.

Urban Daara with Talibés Residing at the Daara

Comprising the majority of daaras in cities,
children often come from rural areas in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau to live and
learn from a marabout. Under the pretext that begging is essential to sustain
the daara and inculcate humility, many marabouts force their talibés
to beg for long hours on the streets. The hours of actual Quranic education
vary considerably.

“Modern” Daara

Though still relatively few in number, these daaras
have introduced fields of study other than memorizing the Quran and learning
Arabic, including French and state school subjects. Begging for money is
generally not performed, as the modern daaras are often financed by
inscription fees, religious authorities, the state, foreign aid, and
humanitarian aid agencies.

Exploitation and Abuses Endured by the
Talibés in Senegal

Each of us has our own technique to survive.– Abu J., 12-year-old talibé in Saint-Louis[50]

In every major Senegalese city, thousands of young boys
dressed in dirty rags trudge back and forth around major intersections, banks,
supermarkets, gas stations, and transport hubs begging for money, rice, and
sugar. Often barefoot, the boys, known as talibés, hold out a small
tomato can or plastic bowl to those passing by, hoping to fulfill the daily
quota demanded by their teachers, or marabouts, who oversee their schooling
and, usually, living quarters. Typically the children are forced to beg for
long hours every day and are beaten, often brutally, for lacking the tiniest
amount. On the street they are vulnerable to car accidents, disease, and often
scorching heat.

Inside the daaras, the boys are subjected to deplorable
conditions and, at times, physical and sexual abuse from older boys. The boys
are typically crammed into a room within an abandoned structure that offers
scant protection against rain or seasonal cold. Many choose to sleep outside,
exposed to the elements. Very few are fed by their marabouts; instead, they
must beg to feed themselves, leaving many malnourished and constantly hungry.
When they fall sick, which happens often, they seldom receive help from the
marabout in obtaining medicines. Ultimately exploited, beaten, and uncared for,
at least hundreds every year dare to run away, often choosing the hardship of a
life on the streets over the abuse of life in the daara.

Forced begging places children in a harmful situation on the
street and therefore meets the ILO’s definition of a worst form of child
labor. Moreover, as the forced begging and gross neglect is done with a view
toward exploitation, with the marabout receiving the child from his parents and
profiting from the child’s labor, it amounts to a practice akin to
slavery.

Large and Growing
Problem

In the environment of all-powerful religious brotherhoods,
limited government response, and the migration of marabouts to urban centers
where forced begging has proliferated, tens of thousands of talibé
children in Senegal, the vast majority under 12 years old, endure exploitation
and severe abuses. Each year, more and more children fall victim to this system
of abuse.

Precise estimates of the number of talibés forced to
beg are difficult to ascertain, as children are constantly running away and
marabouts, emboldened by the absence of government regulation, frequently open
up new daaras. However, based on field research and censuses by academics and
humanitarian workers interviewed for this report, Human Rights Watch estimates there
to be at least 50,000 talibés in Senegal who are forced to beg with a
view toward exploitation by their teachers, out of the hundreds of thousands of
boys attending Quranic schools in total.

The Senegalese government’s enactment in 2005 of a law
that criminalized forcing another into begging for financial gain, as well as
efforts to improve conditions in daaras by local and international aid agencies,
have failed to stem either the growing numbers of talibés or the serious
human rights violations associated with the practice of forced begging and
daara life. Evidence of the growing problem includes:

A Senegalese government official working within the Ministry
of Family, Food Security, Women’s Entrepreneurship, Microfinance,
and Small Children (Ministry of Family) in Mbour (80 kilometers south of
Dakar) registered a near doubling of daaras in the city between 2002 and
2009, including many in which marabouts subjected children to the practice
of forced begging.[51]

A government official who had previously worked in
Ziguinchor (480 kilometers south of Dakar) told Human Rights Watch: “Ziguinchor
is an example of the fast rise of the begging talibés phenomenon.
Up until 1995, the city had barely encountered the presence of these talibés.
Now there are thousands.”[52]

According to an experienced local aid worker in Saint-Louis
(270 kilometers north of Dakar), the number of talibés, including
both those who are forced to beg and those who are not, has doubled since
2005 from an estimated 7,000 to 14,000.[53]

According to the director of Samusocial Senegal, an
international aid organization that provides healthcare to vulnerable
street children in Dakar, including current and former talibés, “There
has been an increase in 2009 in the number of street children in Dakar and
a lowering in the age of the kids on the street.”[54]

Profile: Young and Far
from Home

Of the 175 talibés interviewed by Human Rights Watch,
roughly half were 10 years of age or younger.[55]
On average, the children had begun living at the daara at seven years of age,
though Human Rights Watch interviewed talibés who arrived at the daara when
only three years old.[56]
Many talibés in Senegal are from neighboring countries, most notably
Guinea-Bissau, and are thrust into a neighborhood or city where few people
speak their language. Combined with their age and distance from home, they find
themselves entirely dependent on the marabout, their fellow talibés,
and, more often than not, themselves.[57]

The profiles of talibés interviewed by Human Rights
Watch suggest that the practice of forced begging is not limited to children of
any one ethnic group, region, or neighboring country. While boys from the Peuhl
ethnic group were disproportionately represented amongst the talibés
interviewed in most cities—some 58 percent of the talibés
interviewed by Human Rights Watch were Peuhl, though the Peuhl ethnicity
comprises only one-quarter of Senegal’s population—there were a
large number of Wolofs as well. And while a large portion of the talibé
population in Dakar hailed from Guinea-Bissau, they were a clear minority in
most other Senegalese cities. No matter their places of origin, nearly all
talibés who reside at the daara are far from home and rarely, if ever,
in contact with their families.

Of the 175 talibés interviewed by Human Rights Watch,
the majority (about 60 percent) were Senegalese. However, there were also many
from Guinea-Bissau (about a quarter of those interviewed) and smaller, though
significant numbers of talibés from the Gambia and Guinea. Of all those
interviewed, the majority came from the Peuhl ethnic group (nearly 60 percent)
followed by the Wolof (40 percent).

Ethnicities of Talibés
Interviewed by Human Rights Watch

Places of Origin of Talibés
Interviewed by Human Rights Watch

While samples were insufficient to effectively estimate proportions
of talibés by ethnicity or country of origin in each city, Human Rights
Watch’s research revealed several distinct patterns of migration related
to various cities:

In Dakar, only about half the talibés interviewed
were from Senegal, with almost as many hailing from Guinea-Bissau.[58]
In some neighborhoods, over 90 percent of interviewees were from
Guinea-Bissau, whereas in other neighborhoods, Senegalese predominated.[59]
A clear majority were Peuhl, followed by Wolof and a few Serer.[60]

In Saint-Louis, about 80 percent of talibés
interviewed were from Senegal, followed by Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, and
Mauritania.[61]
Talibés of the Peuhl ethnicity comprised the overwhelming majority.

In Thiès, about 60 percent of talibés
interviewed were from Senegal. The largest number from a neighboring
country hailed from the Gambia, with small percentages from Guinea-Bissau,
Mali, and Mauritania.[62]
Over half were Wolof, followed closely by Peuhl.

In a limited number of interviews in Mbour, the vast
majority of talibés interviewed were from Senegal, followed by the
Gambia. All but one of the talibés were Wolof.[63]

I am from
the region of Tambacounda. My father decided to send me to learn the Quran
when I was six. My mother didn’t want me to leave, but my father
controlled the decision.

The daara
wasn’t a good place, and there were more than 70 of us there. If it was
the rainy season, the rain came into where we slept. The cold season was also
difficult. We didn’t have any cover and there were no mats, so we slept
only on the ground. A lot of the talibés slept outside, because it was
more comfortable.

I did not
have any shoes, and only one shirt and one pair of pants. The marabout had
three sons, and when I got clean clothes, the marabout would take them from
me and give them to his own children. The marabout paid for his children to
go to a modern daara—they didn’t beg.

When we
were sick, the marabout never bought medicines. We would either come to
centers where they would treat us, or we would use our own money to buy
medicines. If I told the marabout I was sick and couldn’t beg, the
marabout would take me to a room and beat me—just as if I was not able
to bring the sum. So I had to go to the streets, even when I was sick.

The normal
hours for studying were from 6 to 7:30 a.m., 9 to 11 a.m., and 3 to 5 p.m. I
begged for money and breakfast from 7:30 to 9 a.m., for money and lunch from
11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and for money and dinner from 5 to 8 p.m. When I first
arrived, I had to bring 100 CFA (US$0.22) a day—that was the sum for
the youngest. As I got older, the marabout raised the quota to 300 CFA
($0.65), half a kilogram of rice, and 50 CFA ($0.11) worth of sugar. I saw
the marabout sell the rice in the community; he never used it to feed us. I
have heard from talibés there now that the quota is up to 500 CFA
($1.09). Even then, it was very difficult for me to find the sum. It was easy
on Friday, the holy day, but on many other days I had problems.

When I
couldn’t bring the quota, which happened at least every week, the
marabout would take me into the room where the oldest talibés slept.
Then he wrapped rope cord around my wrists and beat me with electric cable,
over and over. I still have marks on my back (these marks were shown to Human
Rights Watch). As bad as it was with the marabout, when he was gone it was
even worse. The oldest talibés were really nasty. They would take our
money and then beat us really badly if we missed the quota—I would just
stay out and keep begging, sleep on the street if necessary.

Begging is
difficult. We ended up having to do whatever it took to get the daily sum,
even steal. To be a talibé, it’s not easy.

Nature of Forced Begging: Out of the Classroom and onto
the Street

Begging is a difficult thing, because I would spend all
day begging and sometimes I might end up with nothing.– Mamadou S., eight-year-old former talibé in Thiès[65]

In hundreds of urban residential daaras, the marabout
appears to emphasize forced begging over learning the Quran. As one humanitarian
worker who works closely with talibés told Human Rights Watch, “In
the urban daaras, there is a pretext of education with a real purpose of
exploitation.”[66]

In principle, the marabout is responsible for imparting
mastery of the Quran and a moral education on the talibé. In practice,
the talibés are the marabout’s workers, forced to spend long hours
each day on the streets in search of money, rice, and sugar for the
marabout—who uses almost none of it for their benefit. With education
often secondary to fulfilling the quota, mastering the Quran takes two or three
times longer than it would if the children received a proper education,
according to Islamic scholars in Senegal.

Long
Hours in Search of Money

While the traditional daara placed primary focus on mastering
the Quran, the contemporary urban residential daara often focuses on maximizing
the marabout’s wealth. Amadou S., 10, told Human Rights Watch that each
day the marabout gathers the children at 6 a.m. and, before sending them off
into the streets, encourages them by saying, “The rice is there, good
luck!”[67]
The talibés interviewed by Human Rights Watch spent on average 7 hours
and 42 minutes, spaced throughout the day, begging for either money or food.[68]
Begging is therefore a full-time job for the talibés, generally performed
seven days a week.[69]

The vast majority of marabouts in urban daaras demand a
specific sum that the talibés must bring back each day.[70]
This quota varies between daaras and even within an individual daara: the
youngest and newly arrived are required to bring slightly less; those between eight
and 15 years old must bring the most; and those over 15 are often exempt from
begging.

For the 175 talibés interviewed by Human Rights
Watch, the average daily quota of money demanded by the marabout was 373 CFA
($0.87), except for Friday, where as a result of some marabouts setting higher
quotas to take advantage of greater almsgiving on the holy day, the average
quota was 445 CFA ($0.97).[71]
In a country where approximately 30 percent of the population lives on less
than a dollar a day,[72]
and the gross domestic product per capita is approximately $900,[73]
this is a considerable and often difficult sum to achieve. The quota varies
greatly by city, as shown in the text box below, but the hours spent begging
each day are remarkably consistent. The principal difference is that Dakar is a
far richer city, which results in a higher quota.

Average Begging Quota in CFA and
Hours by City

Normal
Days

Friday

Hours

Dakar

463

642

7
hrs, 42 mins

Saint-Louis

228

228

7
hrs, 36 mins

Thiès

254

268

7
hrs, 54 mins

Mbour

246

246

7
hrs, 18 mins

In addition to money, many marabouts require that their
talibés bring back sugar and uncooked rice. Just over 50 percent of
talibés interviewed by Human Rights Watch had a quota for either rice or
sugar, around 14 percent had a quota for both rice and sugar, and 35 percent
only had to bring whatever they could. The daily quotas ranged from half a
kilogram to three kilograms of rice, and from 50 to 100 CFA ($0.11-$0.22) worth
of sugar.

In daaras where quantities of rice or sugar are demanded,
every talibé told Human Rights Watch that none of what they brought back
was ever used for their own consumption. The account of Samba G., eight years
old, was typical of what occurred in daaras with high rice quotas or a large
number of talibés: “When you brought in the rice, the marabout would
fill up large [50-kilogram] bags. When they were full, he would send them back
to his village or he would sell them in the neighborhood.”[74]
A 50-kilogram bag of rice sells for around 20,000 CFA ($43.50) in Dakar.

As the forced begging is done “with a view”
toward exploitation, with the marabout receiving the child from his parents and
profiting from the child’s labor, it amounts to a practice akin to
slavery.[75]

Going to the City: Suburban
Talibés’ Holy Day on Dakar’s Streets

In one of the most exploitative practices, many
marabouts in Dakar’s suburbs force their talibés, either
explicitly or indirectly, through an elevated quota of 750 ($1.63) to 1,500
CFA ($3.26), to travel into Dakar from Thursday to Saturday in order to
maximize their earnings. They beg around the main mosques in Dakar,
particularly on the Friday holy day when Senegalese give greater alms. Human
Rights Watch interviewed over a dozen talibés from different suburbs,
including Guédiawaye, Mbao, Pikine, and Keur Massar (ranging from 10
to 30 kilometers outside Dakar), and the vast majority said that they engaged
in this practice.

An 11-year-old talibé in Keur Massar
described waking up at 5 a.m. on Thursday to catch public transport into
Dakar, hopping off and walking when caught not paying. He, like the others,
would then beg all day Thursday before sleeping on Dakar’s streets
Thursday night. A full day of begging on Friday follows, either with a return
to the suburb on Friday night or, more often, another night on the street
before returning Saturday morning.

Rather than attending mosque with their
talibés on Friday, marabouts are widely subjecting children to 16-hour
work days and nights on the streets.

Injury
and Death from Car Accidents

The hours spent on the street begging put talibés at
considerable risk of injury and death from car accidents. It is a common sight
to see talibés, some as young as four years old, weaving precariously
between cars on major streets, approaching cars as they pull into and out of
driveways and in inter-city transport hubs, and sticking their hand or bowl
into car windows in the hopes that alms will be given.

Human Rights Watch documented four cases of death as a
result of car accidents, and interviewed nine talibés who had been
victims of car accidents, with injuries ranging from soreness and bruises to
multiple broken bones. In addition, a marabout interviewed by Human Rights Watch
said that an eight-year-old talibé under his de facto guardianship had
in late 2009 suffered breaks to both of his legs in a car accident.[76]
A father of a former talibé told Human Rights Watch that his son had in
2006 suffered a serious injury to his arm as a result of a car accident in
Dakar, which still affected him three years later.[77]

While a small sample, all four deaths documented by Human
Rights Watch occurred in Dakar—not surprising given the greater level of
traffic in the capital. All the deaths and injuries documented happened while
the talibés were begging. A 2007 study on begging children in Dakar noted
that the conditions on the street inherently expose begging children to
dangers, particularly illnesses and car accidents.[78]
Likewise, government officials and directors of international humanitarian
organizations and local human rights organizations all related to Human Rights
Watch that the dangers on the street, including from car accidents, placed the
talibés in an extremely vulnerable position for long hours each day.[79]

Pape M., 13, witnessed the death of a friend and fellow
talibé in a car accident in Dakar in 2007. He emotionally told Human
Rights Watch:

My friend—we begged together—was killed by a
car. It happened when the sun was almost down, during the cold season. We were out
begging and a car hit him. It was a big car. I don’t know how it
happened. The car just hit him and he died, right next to me. The car stopped
and people came around. People were shouting at the driver. I think he was
taken to the hospital—someone took him in a car—but he died. I
never heard the marabout talk about it.[80]

Two other talibés told Human Rights Watch that a
fellow talibé in their daara had been killed by a car accident, but
neither was present when it happened.[81]A traditional chief in Guinea-Bissau lost
a talibé nephew to a car accident in Dakar, concluding that “the
practice of forced begging on the street is truly terrible for the children.”[82]

Nine talibés interviewed by Human Rights Watch described
having suffered injuries from car accidents. Bouba D., nine years old, was
injured while begging near the transport terminal in Thiès:

I was hit at the place where the cars leave.I
was standing on the side of the road begging near one station wagon when
another car came by and struck me. It wasn’t bad—I didn’t
break any bones. But several other talibés from my daara have been
struck by cars here too, and they have suffered broken bones. One his leg,
one his arm. Accidents happen frequently.[83]

Similarly, Ibrahima T., 13, related:

I was hit by a motorbike once and hurt my knee. I was on
the side of the road—the road from Dakar to Rufisque—but the
motorbike came off the road and struck me. My knee still hurts sometimes, and
this was several years ago. The marabout never took me to the hospital.[84]

The frequent accidents demonstrate one of the many ways that
forced begging meets the ILO definition of a worst form of child labor and
constitutes a violation of the child’s right to physical security and
protection from injury, and, in cases of death, a violation of the right to
life.[85]
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) requires the state to take all
appropriate measures to safeguard the children’s right to physical and
mental security. Marabouts, as de facto guardians, are failing to act in the
best interests of the child as is also required under the CRC.[86]

Denying the Right to Education

The limited time
talibés spend in Quranic classes in most urban daaras, as compared with the
time spent begging, brings into question not only the motives of the marabouts,
but also the relative value of education received in the daaras.

The number of hours the talibés interviewed by Human
Rights Watch spent in classes varied greatly—from less than one hour per
day to as much as eight hours. However, they almost unanimously described
spending more time begging for money and food than they spent in the classroom
learning the Quran. On average, they spent nearly eight hours a day begging and
only five hours a day scheduled for Quranic classes.

Talibés from several daaras made clear that the hours
of study were strictly enforced; however, in the majority of daaras from which
talibés were interviewed, it was clear that scheduledhours far
surpassed actual hours of learning. Human Rights Watch interviewed tens of
talibés in the street in the midst of hours that they said were set
aside for studying; when asked why they were not in class at the daara, they
universally responded that they would not go back until completing the quota. In
addition, many talibés said that the long hours on the street make it
difficult for them to concentrate even while at the daara, due to hunger and
general fatigue.

The result is that in many urban residential daaras, the
talibés’ progress in learning to master the Quran and read and
write Arabic, as well as their ability to access education in other basic
skills, is severely undermined by the marabouts’ apparent prioritization
of begging over classroom time. One marabout in Mbour told Human Rights Watch: “I
have never begged my talibés because I want them to learn. The most
important part of the apprenticeship is the Quran, and the hours of begging
take away from that.”[87]
The president of ONG Gounass, a humanitarian organization in Kolda that works
closely with daaras in the region and operates a modern daara, likewise
related:

The student is there supposedly learning the Quran. But
there are many children that pass 10 to 15 years in the daaras and they know
neither the Quran nor a true understanding of Islam. They leave the daara
without any skills and without even knowing the Quran.[88]

The right to education under the CRC includes an education “designed
to empower the child by developing his or her skills, learning and other
capacities, human dignity, self-esteem and self-confidence.”[89]
Where a child barely learns the Quran and no other educational material, this
right is clearly left unfulfilled. Article 7(b) of the Cairo Declaration on
Human Rights in Islam gives parents the right to choose the form of education
for their children, so long as they take into consideration the child’s
interests;[90]
and article 9(b) states that “[e]very human being has a right to receive
both religious and worldly education.”[91]
While Quranic education can therefore be an integral part to a child’s
self-development, tens of thousands of talibés in Senegal are failing to
receive either a religious education or an education in other basic skills.

Severe Physical Abuse

Each time I was beaten, I would think of my family who
never laid a hand on me.– Abdou K., 11-year-old former talibé[92]

The overwhelming majority of talibés interviewed by
Human Rights Watch reported suffering repeated, often severe, physical abuse in
the daara. Beatings were most frequently reported within the context of
failing to return the daily quota, although there were tens of talibés
who were also beaten for failure to master the Quranic verses. The
physical abuse was perpetrated by the marabout himself or, to a lesser extent,
an older talibé, or “grand” talibé, who served as an
assistant teacher.[93]

Talibés typically described being taken to a room, stripped
of their shirt, and beaten with an electric cable or a club—usually
struck repeatedly on the back and neck. Some were subjected to stress
positions, chained to a piece of furniture, or bound or shackled during the
beating. More than 20 talibés revealed to Human Rights Watch welts and
scars resulting from beatings they had received. The children expressed
profound levels of fear at what would await them should they fail to meet the
marabout’s established quota.

Malick L., a 13-year-old former talibé, showed Human
Rights Watch the scars from the beatings he had suffered at the hands of his
marabout more than a year before. He recounted his experience, which was typical
of many other talibés interviewed:

When I could not bring the quota, the marabout beat
me—even if I lacked 5 CFA ($0.01), he beat me. It was always the marabout
himself. He took out the electric cable and we went to the room. I stood there
and ... he hit me over and over, generally on the back but at times he missed
and hit my head. I still have marks on my back from the beatings.[94]

Not surprisingly, all but one of the talibés interviewed
by Human Rights Watch who had run away from their daaras said that they had been
beaten repeatedly for failing to bring enough money; the other was brutally
beaten for mistakes in memorizing the Quran. Of the 139 current talibés
interviewed, 77 percent described being beaten for failing to collect the
quota. Human Rights Watch believes that this percentage may be even higher,
given the apparent fear among children interviewed in groups, particularly on
the street, that other talibés might report to the marabout what had
been discussed with the researcher.[95]

Of those who described being beaten for failing to collect
the quota, the overwhelming majority stated that it happened each and every
time that they could not bring the quota. Other talibés described being
beaten only after being given a “second chance” to complete the
quota, as Boubacar D., 12, told Human Rights Watch:

If we cannot bring the quota one day, our name is put on
the board with the sum we owe. We are in debt. If we cannot bring it all the
next day, then we are beaten badly with electric cable.[96]

Every talibé but one stated that the punishment was
inflicted by the marabout himself or with his clear knowledge and
endorsement—since he was, at a minimum, physically present when some of the
beatings occurred.[97]

Determining the precise frequency of the beatings is
difficult, as many of the talibés are very young and conceptions of time
are not always accurate. All but one former talibé interviewed by Human
Rights Watch said that they suffered the beatings at least once a week, and
many said two or three times. Among current talibés, answers varied from
very rarely to every day.[98]
A large number of talibés said that their beatings were particularly
common on Saturdays and Sundays, since there are far fewer people on the
streets to give money.

During in-depth interviews, talibés identified a
number of different objects that marabouts and other teachers had used to beat them.
Most commonly cited was electric cable (39 cases, including one in which a long
strip of iron was attached to inflict additional damage), followed by a club
(13 cases), a cane (six), a whip (four), a hand (three), a tire strip (three),
rope cord (two), and “whatever is lying around” (two).

If I can’t bring the quota, then the marabout beats
me with an electric cable or a club. He takes us into a room and brings other
talibés in to watch. Every time he forces us to hold our ears and move
up and down as he strikes us—he keeps striking while we do this until we
tumble over. If we tumble over right away, he starts again.[100]

Eight talibés described being chained or bound with
rope during beatings by their marabout or an assistant.[101]
Ibrahima T., 13, recounted being repeatedly bound and beaten in a daara in a Dakar
suburb before running away in 2009:

Every time I could not complete the quota by 10 a.m., one
of the grand talibés would take me into a room and chain me around my
ankles. Then he would beat me with electric cable or a tire strip—the
strikes were too numerous to count. After he finished, the grand talibé
would leave me there, chained, until seven at night, sometimes beating me again....
The punishment was the same for arriving late. If I came back after 10 a.m.,
even with the quota, I was chained until nighttime and beaten—the
marabout was very strict about it.[102]

One marabout employed a particularly heinous method of
punishment, in which he forced the youngest talibés to brutalize each other
or suffer additional consequences (see text box of the story of Laye B. below).

The talibés almost universally described the
beatings—and the fear of a coming beating when they were unable to
collect the quota—as the worst abuse in the daara. Babacar R., 14,
related:

Begging is too difficult because if I do not have the daily
quota, the grand talibé beats me. He hits me everywhere—on the
head, the back, everywhere, and over and over. It’s difficult, it’s
very painful.... I want to return home and work in my village. I don’t
want to be here.”[103]

Moreover, the gross neglect, deprivation, and serious human
rights abuses endured by tens of thousands of talibés at the hands of
many marabouts are augmented when, as is common, the marabout is either absent
or leaves the daara for days or even weeks. Human Rights Watch documented 18
cases in which the marabout lived in a house separate from the daara where the
talibés slept, including some instances when the marabout only came to
the daara on certain days.[104]
Tens of talibés described how their marabouts left the city multiple
times a year to return to home villages—sometimes for holidays, sometimes
to bring back more talibés.[105]
In each of these daaras, talibés as young as four are left under the
supervision of older talibés, generally around 18 years old. Under such
circumstances, older talibés are responsible for frequent beatings,
stealing money from younger talibés, and sexual abuse.[106]

Talibés who said that they were not beaten generally
acknowledged another form of dangerous punishment: refusing entry into the
daara. Talibés in these daaras said that while their marabout did not
strike them, they could not come back to the daara until they completed the
quota. This restriction often resulted in their begging late into the night or,
alternatively, sleeping on the streets.[107]
In only around 7 percent of Human Rights Watch’s interviews did
talibés say that there was no punishment at all for failing to bring the
quota.

The fear of corporal punishment or of being forced to sleep
outside for failing to meet their quota has driven some talibés to turn
to stealing. Seydou R., 13, was one of several talibés to describe this
phenomenon to Human Rights Watch:

Because we were scared of being beaten for not having the
sum, all of us would steal something and give the money to the marabout if we
were in danger of not collecting the sum. We would do anything to get the 300
CFA ($0.65).[108]

A government official of the Action Educative en Milieu
Ouvert (AEMO), a part of the Ministry of Justice that works with children,
told Human Rights Watch that the problem of talibés implicated in theft,
seemingly driven by their need to attain the required quota, is increasing each
year.[109]
The result, as stressed by a government official within the Ministry of Family,
is that “over time, because of the tough life they have led and because
they are forced to steal, it becomes difficult to integrate them into
productive life.”[110]

The severe physical abuse that many marabouts inflict on the
talibés in their care, as well as the looming threat of violence, violates
the children’s right to freedom from physical and mental violence and
abuse. Under the CRC, the state is obligated to protect children from such
abuse whether committed by a parent, a legal guardian, or any other person
caring for the child—clearly applying to a marabout who acts as a de
facto guardian.[111]
The Committee on the Rights of the Child, the body charged with interpreting
the CRC, has stated that the prohibition against physical and mental violence also
applies to corporal punishment in schools.[112]
The physical abuse likewise places the marabout in conflict with Senegal’s
penal code, which provides particular care to children.[113]

In addition, particularly in cases in which chaining, binding,
stress positions, and other more brutal forms of punishment are used, the
physical abuse may rise to the level of torture under the Convention against
Torture. The Committee against Torture has stated:

[W]here State authorities or others
acting in official capacity or under colour of law, know or have reasonable
grounds to believe that acts of torture or ill-treatment are being committed by
non-State officials or private actors and they fail to exercise due diligence
to prevent, investigate, prosecute and punish such non-State officials or
private actors consistently with the Convention, the State bears responsibility
and its officials should be considered as authors, complicit or otherwise
responsible under the Convention for consenting to or acquiescing in such
impermissible acts.[114]

Violations of the Rights
to Food, Physical Development, and Health

Human Rights Watch found that many marabouts are grossly
negligent in providing for the health and nutritional needs of the
talibés for whom they are responsible. Children are subjected to severe overcrowding,
a lack of sanitation, and inadequate protection from weather. The poor
conditions in the daara are combined with a lack of clothes and shoes for the
talibés’ long days on the street, which increases their
vulnerability to disease. Forced to beg for food, many are also extremely
malnourished. Often sick, their marabout rarely provides medicines, requiring
them to beg even greater hours in order to pay for their own treatment; more
often, they suffer from the illness—no matter how severe—and
continue begging to satisfy the quota. Human Rights Watch documented the cases
of two talibés who died from illnesses, in both cases believed to be
from malaria not adequately treated by the marabout.[115]

Conditions
in the Daara

Human Rights Watch visited over 40 urban residential daaras
throughout Senegal. In the vast majority, conditions severely undermined the
children’s rights to health and an adequate standard of living for
physical and mental development. Serious overcrowding, a lack of sanitation and
running water, a lack of adequate protection from harsh weather conditions, and
the instability of the daara structures themselves posed a serious health risk
to the talibés.

Most of the daaras visited were situated in abandoned,
partially constructed structures or makeshift thatched compounds with concrete
or sand floors, which offered little protection from the heat, rain, or
cold—compounded by a lack of cover and, in some cases, even something as
basic as a mat to sleep on. The daaras are also extremely overcrowded with poor
sanitation, leaving talibés dirty and vulnerable to bites from mosquitoes
and other insects.

One daara visited by Human Rights Watch in Saint-Louis was
located in the middle of the neighborhood garbage dump, surrounded by standing
water and refuse. While dismal, the daara was described as an upgrade over
where the talibés had formerly been housed—the back of an
abandoned truck.[116]
In Mbour, one talibé was killed and four others were seriously injured
in December 2009 when the partially constructed building acting as their daara
collapsed at night.[117]
While these were two of the most extreme cases documented by Human Rights Watch,
the average daara is hardly much better.

Many boys interviewed by Human Rights Watch complained about
the cold they suffered during Senegal’s winter—from December through
March—when nightly temperatures routinely descend to 60 degrees
Fahrenheit, or 17 degrees Celsius.[118]
Very few of them had any form of cover, as described by nine-year-old Moussa
A.:

There are 57 of us and we all sleep in two rooms. It is
very cold right now and we sleep on mats, with no cover. When it gets cold, we
huddle and sleep as close together as possible to try to stay warm, but it is
really hard. Some nights we hardly sleep.[119]

Indeed, 56 percent of talibés interviewed said that
they had no cover at all in the daara. Nearly all the others who reported
having some form of cover said it had been provided by a humanitarian
organization or marraines (community godmothers),[120]or was made by the talibés themselves.[121]

Moreover, just over 30 percent of talibés interviewed
by Human Rights Watch said that they slept directly on the ground. The rest
almost all slept on thin mats or rice sacks stuffed with anything soft that the
talibés could find. Human Rights Watch visited only one daara in which
talibés slept in beds—they had been provided by a humanitarian
organization in Mbour.

Many talibés complained of severe overcrowding.
Daaras ranged in size from only six talibés to more than 200, with most
housing around 40 talibés. In the vast majority of daaras with fewer
than 40 talibés, all of them—from ages four to 18—slept in a
single room. As the daara size increased, additional rooms generally housing no
fewer than 30 talibés each were added. The result, as explained by
Alassane L., 12 years old, was that many move outside to sleep:

In Mbao [a suburb of Dakar], there were around 30 students
in the daara and one room. It was a small room and ... there was not much
space. It was so crowded that when it was hot outside, it became so hot in the
room, it was tough to live there; I would just sleep outside.[122]

Human Rights Watch observed several talibés sleeping
on the street in Dakar, Saint-Louis, and Thiès. As Idrissa C., 11, and
other talibés expressed, however, sleeping outside was impossible during
some parts of the year: “During the rainy season, we join the others
inside because it’s a little dryer than outside [under the covering]. It’s
really crowded and hot then though. It’s almost impossible to sleep.”[123]
Yet inside is only a little better during the rainy season, which lasts from
July through September, as talibés from tens of daaras said that the
shelters routinely leak, forcing them to sleep in water inside the daara.[124]

In addition to the cold, the rain, and the hard ground,
talibés often described suffering from exposure to mosquitoes. Human
Rights Watch saw mosquito nets in only one of the daaras it visited, and a 2007
study of begging children in Dakar found that only 6 percent slept under
mosquito nets.[125]
Already only allotted around six hours of sleep a night because of the demands
of begging and studying, the talibés are further deprived of sleep by
the conditions that leave them at the mercy of the elements.

Marabouts interviewed by Human Rights Watch were keenly
aware of the problem; the overwhelming majority cited a lack of rooms as either
the most pressing or second most pressing issue they faced.[126]
The second most cited problem, no less severe in terms of its effect on the
talibés’ health, is a lack of a water pump—meaning that the
daara must purchase water, often leading to shortages.[127]

Compounding these difficult conditions, the vast majority of
talibés owned few pieces of clothing and one or no pairs of shoes. Human
Rights Watch conducted interviews during Senegal’s four-month winter and
almost every talibé described having only a T-shirt and pants in which
to endure the nightly cold.[128]
Several talibés said that the three-month rainy season was even worse:
the brutally hot and humid days on the street, with frequent rain showers,
combine to soak their clothes with sweat and rain, leaving them few or no other
outfits to change into.[129]
The few talibés who did describe having sufficient clothing all said
that they had received none of it from their marabout.[130]
With barely enough water for drinking in the daara, there is rarely enough left
over for talibés to wash their clothes, except very infrequently or with
the help of marraines or community centers.[131]

Human Rights Watch documented cases from eight
daaras—representing over 15 percent of daaras from which talibés
were subject to in-depth interviews—in which the marabouts stole new
clothing that the talibé had either been given or purchased for himself.
While the traditional explanation for the talibés’ wearing rags
and not having new clothes is to teach humility, that justification is shown to
be hollow when every talibé who had clothing stolen said that the
marabout gave the new clothing to his own children.[132]
Several talibés described seeing their clothing on the marabout’s
children, including 13-year-old Moustafa F.:

One time, after saving my money, I had enough to buy some
new clothes, because my two shirts were old and dirty. I bought them in the market
and brought them back to the daara, but the marabout took them from me and gave
them to his own son. He often wore one of my new shirts, and I had to keep
wearing my old stuff.[133]

Over 40 percent of the talibés interviewed reported
owning no shoes or sandals, a problem disproportionately weighted toward the
youngest talibés and shocking given that plastic sandals generally cost
less than 1,000 CFA ($2.17). Adama H., eight years old, told Human Rights
Watch: “I begged without shoes on in the heat, it was very difficult. [The
ground] was so hot sometimes. I hurt a lot.”[134]
One medical professional who treats talibés told Human Rights Watch that
the lack of shoes leads to cuts and other wounds on their feet, which often
become infected.[135]

The conditions in the daara, including overcrowding, lack of
sanitation, lack of protection from the harsh weather, and lack of clothing,
violate the children’s right to an adequate standard of living for their
physical and mental development, including the right to adequate housing, under
the CRC and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.[136]
When a marabout willfully deprives a child of these basic needs, he is also
committing a criminal act under Senegal’s penal code.[137]

Violation
of the Rights to Food and Physical Development

Forced to beg for their meals despite in some cases bringing
a considerable amount of rice to the daara, most talibés interviewed by
Human Rights Watch described suffering from extreme hunger on a daily basis,
often eating at best one or two small meals a day, usually consisting of bread
and rice. A 2007 report by UNICEF, the ILO, and the World Bank found that the
majority of begging children in Dakar, including talibés, were observed
to be malnourished, often severely.[138]

In only one of the more than 100 daaras from which Human
Rights Watch interviewed talibés did the marabout provide food for them.
Indeed, Human Rights Watch interviewed talibés from some 15 residential daaras
in Saint-Louis just after Tabaski, one of the most important religious and
cultural holidays in Senegal, marked by a feast of roasted sheep, and all said
that they received no food from the marabout that day—even in the daaras
where the marabout had prepared one or multiple sheep for himself, his family,
and sometimes others in the community.[139]

Deprived of food by their de facto guardians, many
talibés are forced to beg in markets or door-to-door in neighborhoods to
try to fulfill their daily nutritional needs. Many find specific families that
are willing to provide some regular assistance, but rarely is it sufficient. Moussa
A., nine years old, told Human Rights Watch:

The marabout does not give us anything from the rice we
give him every day.... There is a Peuhl family in the neighborhood that gives
me rice at midday most days, sometimes with fish. They don’t give me
anything for dinner though, so I have to beg. Sometimes I have trouble finding
dinner, and I am very hungry when I can’t.[140]

To help ensure that no one goes completely without food,
talibés in many daaras have developed a survival strategy of pooling
their food. Issa S., a seven-year-old talibé, told Human Rights Watch: “We
share our food from begging with each other, so if someone is not able to find
any, he will still be able to eat a little.”[141]
Despite survival strategies, many talibés go hungry on an almost daily
basis. Mamadou S., eight years old, related: “It wasn’t easy to
find food; there were some days when I didn’t eat anything at all.”[142]
Likewise, Lamine C., 12, recalled some days when he was so hungry that he
looked through trash for food.[143]

The minority of talibés that did receive three full
meals a day generally told Human Rights Watch that they were provided by a
marraine,or community godmother.[144]
Even when talibés had marraines, however, marabouts’ demands
sometimes kept them from receiving their meals. Several marraines interviewed
by Human Rights Watch said that the talibés they fed occasionally missed
meals to beg so as to ensure that their quota was reached.[145]
One marraine in Mbour said that a talibé she helped support did not come
on days after he was severely beaten, because the marabout refused to let him
leave the daara for fear that his wounds would be seen by others.[146]

Forced to beg for food and often extremely malnourished, the
vast majority of talibés in urban centers are denied their rights to
food and physical development under the CRC and the African Children’s
Charter—rights which the state, parents, and the marabout, as a de facto
guardian, are failing to fulfill.[147]
The Senegalese penal code likewise criminalizes the act of willfully depriving
a child of food and care in a way that impacts the child’s health,
placing many marabouts in conflict with the law.[148]

Violation
of the Right to Health

As a result of the long hours talibés spend on the
street, the malnutrition they suffer from inadequate food, and the deplorable
conditions in many daaras, nearly all talibés interviewed by Human
Rights Watch described suffering from frequent illnesses. Although placed in
charge of the talibés by parents—and seemingly in possession of
money from the proceeds of forced begging—only around 30 percent of
marabouts in daaras from which children were interviewed provided medical
assistance to talibés. One medical professional who treats large numbers
of talibés described their situation to Human Rights Watch as “very
precarious in terms of their health.”[149]

Over 90 percent of talibés interviewed described
having suffered from one or more diseases in the previous year,[150]
with the most common problems being infected wounds; skin diseases; diarrhea;
malaria; eye infections; severe headaches; fever; and fatigue.[151]
One marabout said that several of his talibés had suffered from cholera
during the hot rainy season.[152]
Humanitarian workers described how diseases, particularly conjunctivitis and
skin ailments like scabies that often cover the talibés’ entire
bodies, spread rapidly through the daaras given the close quarters and lack of
sanitation, leaving huge numbers of talibés in a daara sick at the same
time. Human Rights Watch visited tens of daaras in which it appeared that over
half the children required treatment for visibly present symptoms of
conjunctivitis or skin disease.

Approximately 70 percent of talibés interviewed told
Human Rights Watch that when they fell sick, their marabout provided no funds
with which they could visit a clinic or purchase medicine, no matter how severe
the illness was.[153]
The account of Pape M., 13, was typical:

When I was sick, I was never treated by the marabout. If we
said that we were sick, the marabout would tell us to find medicines ourselves.
So generally I would just suffer, try to sleep it off. I had skin diseases and
malaria several times, but diarrhea was the most frequent problem.[154]

In a particularly egregious case, a group of some 10
talibés from a large Dakar daara told Human Rights Watch that a
nongovernmental organization regularly provided their marabout with medicines, but
rather than use the free medicines to treat the talibés, he sold the
medicines for profit. When they fell ill, the marabout told them to use their
own money from begging to buy medicines. The talibés said that even when
their companion suffered a broken leg from a car accident, the marabout told
the group to collectively pay for the hospital visit and treatment with begging
proceeds.[155]

Human Rights Watch interviewed three talibés who
described being beaten by their marabouts for having fallen ill, in order to “test”
whether they were faking the illness. Birame N., 13, explained:

When I first became sick, I still had to beg. The marabout
would look at me and say, “No, you are not sick.” If I still wouldn’t
go out, he would beat me badly. He would say that he was seeing if I was truly
sick or just faking.[156]

In addition to failing to provide medical treatment and
sometimes physically abusing talibés when they fall ill, most marabouts
continue to require the talibés to beg for their quota, even when sick.
Saliou M., 13, told Human Rights Watch:

The rule was that if you could walk, you can beg. So even
when we were sick, so long as we could walk, we had to beg.[157]

Many children are forced by their marabouts to make up the
sum they would bring in from a days’ begging, once they are feeling
better. Moussa A., nine, told Human Rights Watch:

If I cannot beg because I am sick, I have to bring double
another day. Since that is not easy, I generally just beg when sick.[158]

The few marabouts who did provide medical
assistance—including visits to the hospital for serious
illnesses—most often did so only after the sickness had become severe.[159]
Moreover, several talibés said that they had to repay the marabout for
what he had spent on their treatment. Amadou S.,10, explained:

When I am sick, the marabout gives me money for medicine, but
he writes down how much he gives. Once we are healthy, we have to beg extra to
bring back that amount in addition to the quota.[160]

Forced to suffer through often severe illness, which in many
cases could be prevented or treated relatively easily, children are denied their
rights to the highest attainable standards of health and the right to physical
development under international law.[161]
The marabout, as de facto guardian, fails to provide the necessary living
conditions, and the state fails to protect the child’s health when
parents and the marabout have proven unable or unwilling to ensure the child’s
rights. In cases in which the deprivation of healthcare is willful, the
marabout is likewise guilty of criminal neglect under Senegal’s penal code.[162]
Senegal is a state party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, which requires that for children, “work harmful to their morals
or health or dangerous to life or likely to hamper their normal development
should be punishable by law.”[163]

Sexual Abuse

Senegal is a conservative
society in which discussions of sexual abuse are largely taboo. As a result,
sexual abuse typically goes unreported, especially when both victim and
perpetrator are male.[164]
This conservatism has made it difficult to ascertain the prevalence of sexual
abuse of boys living within the daaras, though research by Human Rights Watch
and other groups suggests that the problem is very likely to be more widespread
than the few cases that Human Rights Watch was able to document in interviews
with talibés.[165]

Human Rights Watch documented three cases of sexual abuse
within the daaras, two of which were described by the victims themselves and
one by a witness to an attack.[166]
In each case the perpetrator was an older talibé, two of whom were also
assistants to the marabout. Of the two victims, one said that there was
inappropriate touching on multiple occasions; the other was raped on one
occasion.[167]
Ndiaga Y., 13, still clearly affected by the abuse, explained to Human Rights
Watch:

When I first came to the daara, in 2006, a grand
talibé would take me away and touch me [sexually]. He forced me to do it
to him too. It stopped when he left the daara several months later.[168]

Ousmane B., 13, described to Human Rights Watch what he
witnessed:

Several times when the marabout was gone, I saw one of the
[assistant] Quranic teachers do something to another kid in the daara. While we
were sleeping, he came into the youngest boys’ room and pulled one of the
talibés outside. I was in the room, not far away. He started trying to
take the talibé’s clothes off—the young talibé
struggled, and some of us made noise, and he got away. The teacher came again
the next night and took the young talibé farther away, and that time he
did not get away. He was too small. He told me what the older one did [male
rape]. It was not the only time.[169]

In all three cases, the marabout either lived in a house
separate from the daara or was away from the daara at the time when the abuses
occurred.[170]
None of the children informed the marabout about what happened for fear that
the abuser would find out and retaliate. This fear demonstrates the need for
state authorities to create a more protective environment for victims to come
forward.

In addition to sexual abuse inside the daara, humanitarian
agencies identified a risk for sexual abuse posed to children who had run away
from an abusive marabout. In Mbour, Human Rights Watch was shown medical
records documenting multiple cases of male rape against three former
talibés, ages seven, eight, and 11, who had in 2008 run away separately
from their daaras and were sleeping on a beach. According to a social worker
familiar with the case, the children were separately and on several occasions
accosted and raped by men armed with knives in the middle of the night.[171]

Social workers in centers for vulnerable children in Dakar,
Rufisque, and Saint-Louis had also collectively documented tens of cases of
sexual abuse against talibés in 2009, including cases in daaras and on
the street after children had run away.[172]
Several personnel related that in the daaras the abuser was most often an older
talibé.[173]
According to one social worker, most cases on the street are committed by an
older Senegalese youth also living on the street, who appeared to the child to
be under the influence of alcohol or drugs.[174]

The Convention on the Rights of the Child obligates states
parties to take all appropriate measures to protect children from sexual abuse.[175]
In addition to directly improving protection in the daaras, the government must
address the current climate in Senegal, in which discussion of such acts is
taboo, so that talibé victims feel more comfortable speaking about the
abuse and are aware of state and non-state authorities who can provide
protection and psychosocial assistance. While most Dakar-based and Saint-Louis-based
Senegalese organizations have begun to document and discuss the problem of
sexual abuse, the taboo in other regions remains strong. When asked about cases
of sexual abuse by Human Rights Watch, multiple senior officials of local
humanitarian groups noted for their admirable work responded with bewilderment,
acknowledging that they had never asked male children about sexual abuse.[176]

Denying Contact with
Family

Marabouts typically make little to no effort to facilitate
periodic contact between the talibés for whom they are responsible and
their parents. Despite long distances between the daara and the talibé’s
village, the proliferation of mobile phones and network coverage into even more
isolated villages in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau should make periodic contact
extremely easy.[177]
However, Human Rights Watch found that the vast majority of talibés have
no contact with their families. In many cases, this lack of contact was a
deliberate policy of the marabout.

Fewer than 10 percent of talibés interviewed by Human
Rights Watch had seen their parents since leaving home between several months
to more than 10 years before. Even within the 10 percent, contact generally consisted
of one visit by a parent over several years, or a return home for the Tabaski
celebration.[178]

About 20 percent of talibés interviewed had spoken by
phone with their family since leaving home, generally only on rare occasions.[179]
Most talibés interviewed by Human Rights Watch believed that their
marabout knew their parents’ phone number—especially as many
marabouts are relatives or acquaintances from the talibés’ village
of origin—yet chose not to facilitate contact.

Moreover, in about 15 percent of daaras, the lack of
communication was part of a conscious policy by the marabout, according to
talibés interviewed by Human Rights Watch, enforced even if the child
knew the parents’ mobile phone number and offered to pay for the credit
with extra earnings from begging. Oumar M., 11, told Human Rights Watch:

My biggest problem is that the marabout refuses to let us
call our parents. I want to talk to them, and I know my mother’s number,
but I don’t have a phone. Only the marabout does. I really want to talk
to my family, but he says that it makes us want to go home when we talk to our
parents, so he forbids it.[180]

Although marabouts consistently explained to Human Rights
Watch that isolation from family is a way to help the child more effectively
master the Quran, interviews with many parents suggested that there may be a
more malevolent motivation: the marabout’s desire to control information,
so that the level of suffering and abuse in the daara is not conveyed back to
the family. Ansou B., a father from a village in northern Senegal who has two
children studying in a Saint-Louis daara, described how he only receives
information about his children when the marabout comes back to the village: “The
marabout comes here often and he provides news. He tells me that my children
are learning, that they are eating well, and that they are in good health. So I
know they are well.”[181]
While he believed this news, several families interviewed by Human Rights Watch
noted that a similar trust was betrayed when their children were returned by
aid workers and the truth of the deplorable conditions was revealed.[182]
One father related that despite several phone conversations regarding his son’s
well-being, the marabout did not tell him that his son suffered a serious
injury from a car accident while begging. When the father was informed of his
child’s injury by an extended family member in Dakar, the marabout lied
and said it happened while his son was “playing around.”[183]

Refusing to allow a talibé to speak to his family, as
well as deliberately providing misinformation about the child’s health
and well-being to the family, arguably violate the individual duty under
article 29 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights “to
preserve the harmonious development of the family and to work for the cohesion ...
of the family.”[184]
As noted by Professor Ndiaye at the Islamic Institute in Dakar, whatever value
the traditional practice of separation and isolation served when the principal
focus was mastering the Quran, “the current environment does not allow
for this practice anymore.”[185]

Denying the Right to
Play

On average, the talibés interviewed by Human Rights
Watch spent 13 hours a day begging to fulfill their marabout’s quota, obtaining
sufficient food for themselves, and studying the Quran. With their time
consumed from the pre-dawn prayer until the late evening hours, talibés
rarely have time to access forms of education that would equip them with basic
skills, or for normal childhood activities and recreation, including the otherwise
ubiquitous game of football. In some cases, they are even actively punished for
playing by their marabouts who view it as a distraction from begging.

Out of the 73 in-depth interviews conducted with
talibés, only three reported that their marabout specifically allowed
time for leisure or recreation.[186]
In addition, three marabouts told Human Rights Watch that they explicitly set
aside time for recreation, understanding its benefit to studies, community
integration, and quality of life.[187]

For most of the talibés, any chance to play comes at
the expense of the hours spent begging, and so generally only occurs after
having met the daily quota. Fallou P., 11, explained:

The kids in my daara used our extra money and bought a
football for when we finished begging. The marabout allowed us to play—as
long as we had the daily quota and studied well.[188]

Some marabouts have gone even further by actively banning
any form of leisure or recreation. Abdoulaye S., 11, told Human Rights Watch: “The
marabout did not allow us to even play football or anything else. He said, ‘If
you have the time to play, you have the time to beg. Go beg!’”[189]
Similarly, Pape M., 13, said, “If we started to play, the marabout would
take out the electric cable and say, ‘If you continue, I will beat you.’”[190]

While the violation of the right to play may seem
insignificant compared to the severe abuses committed against the
talibés, several of the talibés interviewed said that, for them,
it was one of the worst transgressions of life in the daara. Lamine C., 12, told
Human Rights Watch:

If the marabout saw us playing, he would beat us. In the
early evening, almost every day, all the other neighborhood kids would be out
playing football, but we never could unless we were far away from the daara where
the marabout could not see.[191]

The denial of the right to play, an essential element in the
healthy development of a child and a guaranteed right under the CRC,[192]
is the ultimate symbol that a talibé has no chance, nor right, to be a
child.

On the Run, on the Streets

Unfed by the marabout, untreated when sick, forced to work
long hours only to turn over money and rice to someone who uses almost none of
it for their benefit—and then beaten whenever they fail to reach the
quota—hundreds, likely thousands, of talibés run away from daaras
each year. If found trying to run away by the marabout, the punishment is swift
and severe. If able to achieve their freedom, they often take up life on the
streets—generally shy of even 13 years of age—where they encounter
an environment replete with drugs, violence, and criminality.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 29 talibés who had run
away from their daaras, representing only a small fraction of the children who
try each year. Each former talibé interviewed by Human Rights Watch
noted that before he ran away, others had done the same.[193]
Talibés living in one daara in Dakar with over 70 boys told Human Rights
Watch that all of the children older than 12 or 13 had already run away.[194]
Adama H., eight years old, similarly described:

Sometimes talibés ran away in groups, sometimes
alone. We went from 50 down to less than five. I stayed because my parents had
brought me back when I tried to run away the first time. But then I ran away
again—this time on the back of a garbage truck to go to Dakar. I couldn’t
go back home.[195]

Precise figures on the number of runaways per year are
difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain, however the collective traffic of
runaway talibés recorded in shelters and on the streets by humanitarian
organizations in Senegal leads Human Rights Watch to believe that the number
reaches more than 1,000.

There are tens of shelters in Senegal that briefly house
vulnerable children while staff work, often with the Ministry of Justice and
the International Organization of Migration (IOM), to return the child to his
parents. With the exception of Centre Ginddi, a shelter in Dakar run by the
Ministry of Family, the children’s shelters are all run by
nongovernmental groups, but registered with, and inspected by, the state.
Centre Ginddi has the capacity to house approximately 60 children at once,
whereas most non-state centers can house between 20 and 30 children. A Human
Rights Watch researcher visited shelters for vulnerable children in Dakar,
Rufisque, Saint-Louis, and Thiès, finding them all filled or nearly
filled to capacity. Often, as many as 50 percent of the children at these
shelters were runaway talibés. On average, children at these centers
stay for a few weeks to a few months, indicating a collective flow of hundreds
of runaway talibés each year.

In addition to figures from shelters in Senegal, groups
operating in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau assist a number of runaway
talibés to return home to Guinea-Bissau. Two Bissau-Guinean humanitarian
organizations that operate shelters for former talibés—SOS
Talibé Children (SOS Crianças Talibés) and Association
of the Friends of Children (Associação dos Amigos da
Criança, AMIC) helped more than 430 former talibés in Senegal
to return to their families in Guinea-Bissau in 2007-2008.[196]
Although statistics somewhat overlap, the IOM reported having assisted 307
victims of trafficking for “forced begging” between 2007 and 2009.[197]
All of these figures are limited, however, to include only talibés that
succeed both in running away and in finding centers to house them subsequent to
their flight. Many talibés return home on their own[198]
and hundreds of others take up life on the streets, particularly in Dakar.

Talibés appear to be running away in higher and
higher numbers. Moussa Sow, the head of an organization that works with
vulnerable children in Rufisque, told Human Rights Watch that while runaway
talibés used to represent only 30 percent of the organization’s
caseload, they are now closer to 50 percent.[199]
Isabelle de Guillebon, the director of Samusocial Senegal, an organization that
provides healthcare to street children, likewise stated that the organization
has seen a clear rise in the number of runaway talibés on the street in
the past few years. A Samusocial social worker estimated there to be hundreds
living on Dakar’s streets alone.[200]

Social workers delineate three principal categories of
runaway talibés: those who are found by the marabout or a grand
talibé and returned to the daara; those who make it to a shelter; and
those who take up life on the street. While fear of corporal punishment forces
many to leave, it is likely also a major reason why some talibés do not
run away. As severe as the beatings are for failing to bring the daily quota,
the beatings inflicted when talibés try to run away and are then found are
generally far worse. Assane B., 15, told Human Rights Watch:

When the marabout found runaways, he would put them in a
room, strip them, and have four talibés hold each of the hands and feet
of the runaway while he beat him. It was a very severe beating; every time he
would continue until you could see bad wounds on the body. It was only when he
opened skin—sometimes multiple times—that he would stop.[201]

Severe abuse was also documented when runaway talibés
were brought back to the daara by parents after successfully making it all the
way home. One former talibé described:

When talibés were returned by parents, the marabout
would discuss things with the family, talk about the good conditions, the
learning. Then once the family left to go back home, the other Quranic teachers
would put the returned talibé in a room and beat him badly. Then for the
next few weeks a grand talibé would go with the returned talibé
everywhere to make sure he didn’t run away again.[202]

Many talibés thus plan their escape, knowing exact
locations of shelters to reduce the possibility of being found and returned. Aliou
E., 11, recalled going directly to a Dakar shelter when he ran away during the
rainy season in 2008.[203]
Djiby H., 12, fled his daara with two other talibés in December 2007,
telling Human Rights Watch: “One of my companions knew about Centre
Ginddi, and we went directly there.”[204]

Other talibés choose life on the streets—either
while they figure out how to return home or simply to live there
semi-permanently—over the daara. One former talibé, tired of the
beatings in the daara and already returned once by his parents after having
fled, walked from Kaolack to Fatick (around 50 kilometers) before finding a
vehicle that was traveling to Dakar, where he took up residence on the streets.[205]

Human Rights Watch interviewed talibés who had lived
on the streets for periods ranging from two days to more than five years. A
former talibé explained to Human Rights Watch the rationale of his
decision:

Truly, for me, I prefer the street. The oldest
talibés and the marabout push us to leave the daara. I slept outside
most nights when I was at the daara anyway, which is not much different from
the street. On the street, no one makes me bring back a fixed sum; I decide how
much I beg and get to keep the money. No one beats me for not having enough
money. Life is not easy on the streets, but it’s better than in the
daara.[206]

Three former talibés who had lived on the streets for
months and, in one case, years, described living in bands ranging from nine to
over 40 youth—and described tens of similar bands throughout the region
of Dakar.[207]
The children generally beg for survival, often posing as talibés to
improve their odds. Several admitted, however, that the dire conditions lead
them to steal in the market and from houses. The 27-year-old leader of one
group of street children and youth explained the streets’ difficulties:

There are lots of difficulties for us on the
street—finding food, having a place to sleep, harassment by the
police—but the biggest problem is drugs, particularly alcohol and guinze.
When a new one joins, he is frequently initiated with alcohol, smoking, and
guinze. After that it becomes really tough to break, the street becomes your
fixed residence.[208]

Guinze, a Wolof term, is an industrial thinner that many
street children soak their shirts in or place under their nostrils.[209]
Of the more than 15 youth living on the street at one site near downtown Dakar
visited by Human Rights Watch, every youth but one was visibly on guinze. Those
who take this drug often become violent, fighting each other with broken
bottles, at times leading to severe injuries.[210]

One of the defining legacies of the present-day urban daara
is the growing problem of street children;[211]
talibés who run away and find themselves on the street are thrust into a
life of drugs, theft, predatory behavior, and violence. Without a concerted and
sustained effort by the state, religious leaders, families, and nongovernmental
organizations, the numbers of street children will continue to grow.

I was born in the town of Dara Diolof [in
northwestern Senegal]. When I was five, my family sent me to a powerful
marabout’s daara in Saint-Louis. Almost all of us slept outside under
the sky because there was no room for us in the daara. There were at least 60
talibés.

Each day, the marabout divided us into groups of
two. We had to bring 350 CFA ($0.76), rice, and millet—all were
obligatory. Then, if one of the two of us found the sum, but the other one
failed, the marabout forced the one with the most money to beat the
other—with electric cable laced with a strip of iron. If the
talibé refused, then the marabout himself would beat both
talibés.

I couldn’t handle it anymore, so my older
brother came to get me. When he arrived, the marabout told him that I was
close to finishing the Quran, so my brother left. I was not even halfway
through the Quran. It was then that I decided to run away. The first three
times, a grand talibé trapped me and brought me back to the daara.
With the marabout there, the grand talibé would lock me in a room all
day and beat me; he would leave and then return to beat me again. Finally,
there was a truck traveling to my aunt’s village, so I escaped.

My parents said that they were going to send me back
to the daara, so I ran away again, this time to Kaolack. From there, I fled
to Mbour, where I begged for money to pay for a trip to Dakar.

In Dakar, I’ve lived on and off the streets
for the last six years. I begged to survive. During the rainy season, I slept
under the overhang of a bank; otherwise I slept outside, where there were
other ex-talibés. I often had problems with people on the
street—they would rob me while I was asleep and beat me. The police would
find us outside sometimes and take us to the police station for a couple
days.

It’s because of begging—that is why
there are so many children on the streets. The marabouts need to understand
that it’s really difficult for us to have to bring the sum every day.

Perpetrators and Complicitous Actors

Hundreds of marabouts in Senegal subject talibés
living under their de facto guardianship to conditions akin to slavery. They
force the children to perform a worst form of child labor—begging on the
streets for long hours—and subject them to often brutal physical and
psychological abuse, all within a climate of fear. They are also responsible
for gross negligence, failing to fulfill the children’s basic needs—including
food, shelter, and healthcare—despite a presumption of adequate
resources, brought in primarily by the children themselves. Senior religious
leaders have failed to subject exploitative marabouts to any kind of regulation
or implement disciplinary measures.

The governments of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, who bear
ultimate responsibility under national and international law for human rights
abuses within and at their borders, have failed to take effective action to
protect these children, including through punishing the perpetrators and preventing
future abuse. In Senegal, the government has made next to no attempt to
introduce, much less enforce, regulation of the daaras, apparently allowing the
anticipated political backlash from the brotherhoods to trump the welfare of tens
of thousands of children. The government has likewise made almost no effort to
enforce key laws and hold accountable marabouts who force children to beg or
physically abuse them. In Guinea-Bissau, the government has taken some
meaningful steps to prevent the large-scale trafficking of children to Senegal,
but remains unwilling to hold accountable marabouts who are involved in the
practice. Moreover, the Bissau-Guinean government has largely ignored the
growing problem of begging talibés in its own cities.

Many parents who knowingly send their children into an
abusive situation also bear responsibility for failing to adequately protect
their children from harm. Lastly, humanitarian organizations, while attempting
to fill the protection gap left by the state, have sometimes incentivized the
proliferation of unscrupulous marabouts and urban daaras where forced begging
is rampant.

Marabouts and Religious
Leaders

Marabouts interviewed by Human Rights Watch often
rationalized the practice of forced child begging with explanations that hardly
withstand reason. Some marabouts who hide behind these explanations ultimately stand
to gain considerable money from the talibés’ labor. Meanwhile,
marabouts and religious leaders who take seriously their role as a religious
teacher have failed to publicly voice concern, much less take action to end the
abuses.

Justifications for Forced Begging: Food, Rent, Humility

Each of the some 30 marabouts interviewed by Human Rights
Watch about why they force children under their care to beg gave one or more of
three reasons: to provide for the talibés’ food; to pay the rent
and related costs; and to teach humility. However, forced child begging as
practiced throughout Senegal is wholly inconsistent with each of these stated
reasons.

Every marabout interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that
he had too many talibés to be able to adequately feed them himself, so
begging was necessary to meet the daaras’ food needs. While this may
provide for a collection of meals, it is wholly inconsistent with begging for
money. As noted above, Human Rights Watch interviewed children living in more
than 100 daaras and, with just one exception, none of the money or rice the
talibés collected was ever used for their food needs.

A majority of marabouts also said that begging was necessary
to assist with the daara’s other costs, including rent. Aliou Seck, a
marabout in Saint-Louis, explained: “Begging, in terms of the hours, is
mostly so that the daara can survive—in order to pay the electricity, to
buy Quranic books, for medicines and shoes, and for soap to clean.”[213]
But by occupying abandoned or partially constructed buildings, many marabouts
avoid having to pay rent in the first place. And, as demonstrated throughout this
report, the clear majority of marabouts who force talibés to beg fail to
provide medical care, clothing, adequate shelter, or other basic needs.

Even in daaras where marabouts do pay rent and cover other
costs, it is not the children’s responsibility—particularly through
a worst form of child labor—to pay for the daara. This is all the more so
given that most marabouts consciously chose to leave a village in which they
had a house, separate children from families that could have been the primary
provider of basic needs, and take them into a situation where these costs
exist.

Finally, a majority of marabouts claimed that begging is
important for the talibé’s moral education, particularly to teach
humility. Masso Baldé, a marabout in Saint-Louis, explained: “Begging
is above all for humility—we need to give an education that is very
difficult. In order to truly learn the Quran, one must suffer. Begging is a
part of that.”[214]

While many marabouts profess the importance of teaching
humility, three times as many talibés interviewed by Human Rights Watch
said that their marabout’s own children did not beg as those who said
that they did.[215]
Similarly, as detailed above, some marabouts take clothes from talibés
and give them to their own children. In these cases, any argument that forced
begging is necessary to inculcate humility appears incredibly hollow. Lastly,
the collection of food from community families, combined with living in
relatively ascetic conditions and assisting with cultivation, was formerly
sufficient to teach humility in the traditional daara—and remains
sufficient in village daaras and some urban daaras throughout Senegal.

If one accepts that asceticism and humility are important
components of Quranic education, the teaching of these qualities still offers
no justification, as many marabouts say, for the forced begging, daily quotas,
and physical punishment for failing to bring the quota inflicted on the
talibés. As asserted by a Senegalese academic who has studied the daara
system: “As we currently observe [the situation] in urban areas, begging does
not represent an element of religious education.”[216]

Unjustified by any of the marabouts’ explanations, the
practice of forced begging for money, particularly with an often brutally
enforced quota, can only be described as exploitation. Aliou Seydi, a marabout
in Kolda who has followed his father’s example by not having his
talibés beg, explained:

The teachings of Islam are completely contrary to sending
children on the street and forcing them to beg. They can work the
fields—that teaches them a skill, teaches them hard work. But certain
marabouts have ignored this—they love the comfort, the money they receive
from living off the backs of the children. That is the only explanation for how
the practice has become.[217]

A Quranic teacher since 1990, Mohamad Ba returned
from Dakar to his Kolda village in 1996, with the help of UNICEF. The daara,
a well-made structure built by Ba, currently has 60 talibés—six
live with families in surrounding villages and 54 reside at the daara. Three
women in the village cook for the talibés in residence, and the costs
are covered through the cultivation of millet, rice, and fruit.

During the week, the children go to school from 8
a.m. to 4 p.m., with a break for lunch and recreation. On the weekend, the
talibés combine Quranic studies with cultivation and prayer lessons.
Only during the harvest period do children assist with cultivation on
weekdays.

On his own initiative, Ba “modernized”
the daara. The talibés learn French in addition to Quranic and formal
Arabic studies. With a strong focus on studies, talibés master the
Quran in three years, or in five years when combined with French and Arabic
proficiency. When a talibé masters the Quran, Ba travels with the
child to his village, for the traditional test and celebration.

In addition to providing greater assistance for
village daaras, Ba recommends the creation of a “diploma for completing
Quranic school, to show who has really mastered the Quran.”

Mohamadou Sali Ba, a marabout in Saint-Louis, similarly felt
that exploitation through forced begging, as well as physical abuse in daaras, sharply
conflicted with the tenets of Islam:

We are all under God, and it is necessary to respect the
Quran and all human beings. I do not hit my students because that affects their
intelligence—they only think about being hit and they cannot study. These
false marabouts, who exploit the children with long begging hours and beat them
severely, it makes me very angry. In the Quran, the Prophet teaches politeness
and mutual respect. Those marabouts that do not act in accordance with this
cannot really serve themselves under the Quran.[219]

From Ascetic to Affluent

While Human Rights Watch is not in a position to determine
the origin of a given marabout’s apparent wealth, it is clear that some
measure of many marabouts’ wealth is derived from the exploitation of talibés.
At the least, the money obtained through forced begging is sufficient to provide
for a considerably higher standard of care in the daara.

Human Rights Watch visited more than 40 daaras in Senegal, observing
that many marabouts—including some who force talibés to
beg—live ascetic and relatively poor lives. Other marabouts—generally
those that demand higher quotas of money, rice, and sugar—appeared to use
proceeds from forced begging for their personal benefit. Many talibés,
fellow marabouts, and community members told Human Rights Watch that they knew
marabouts who owned multiple homes and enjoyed all available modern luxuries.

In a country where 30 percent of the population lives on
less than a dollar a day,[220]
half of the population lives below the poverty line,[221]
and the government pays the average primary school teacher a monthly wage of
around 125,000 CFA ($272),[222]
many marabouts have found a way to live comfortably through the exploitation of
children.

While each daara is unique in terms of the number of
talibés and the quota imposed, below are calculations from four representative
daaras from which Human Rights Watch interviewed talibés:

Proceeds of Forced Child
Begging:
Sums Demanded by Marabouts in Four Representative Daaras[223]

A former talibé from the daara in Dakar detailed
above, who had run away with four others because of frequent beatings, told Human
Rights Watch that the marabout lived in a “nice” house separate
from his daara in Dakar, and that he also had the largest house, which the
talibé had visited, within his and the surrounding villages in
Guinea-Bissau—complete with fully installed electricity, multiple
motorbikes, and multiple televisions.[224]

Indeed, talibés from several daaras told Human Rights
Watch that they believed their marabouts were wealthy enough from their
exploitation to own multiple, often lavish homes, which the talibés had visited.[225]
Human Rights Watch visited one daara with over 200 talibés in Guédiawaye,
where the talibés lived crammed in an abandoned structure swarming with
insects and without water, windows, doors, or a toilet. A kilometer away, the
daara’s marabout, Malic Mane, had a house, visited by Human Rights Watch,
but he more often resided in a second house in the Dakar suburb of
Mbao—coming to the daara only once or twice a week according to
talibés at the daara.[226]
Several local organizations had informed the Ministry of Justice of the daara’s
squalid conditions in 2005, according to the director of one organization, but
no action was taken.[227]
Human Rights Watch scheduled two meetings with the marabout, but the marabout
failed to honor the engagement.[228]

Fellow marabouts and community members in Kolda, a region in
southern Senegal from which a disproportionate percentage of Senegalese
talibés and marabouts hail, cited wealth as relatively common. One
marabout in Kolda stated:

The practice of considerable money coming back from Dakar
daaras is very common. There is a grand marabout here in Kolda who has sent
students with a grand talibé to Dakar, and then money is sent back to
him here, which he lives off very comfortably. And there are many marabouts who
use the money from begging to build large homes and to control other buildings,
here and in Guinea-Bissau.[229]

A community member who has lived in the region of Kolda for
more than 40 years likewise told Human Rights Watch:

I know marabouts here who have big houses, cars, and
motorbikes, own multiple buildings, and who dress nicer than businessmen. Some
of them live here currently; some have daaras elsewhere in the country. It
almost becomes a contest between them to have the most talibés.[230]

Silent Acceptance

A number of marabouts and imams expressed indignation over
the proliferation of “faux-marabouts” and what they perceived to be
the prioritization of begging and money over the Quran in other daaras.
However, few were willing to publically denounce the exploitation, press for
government regulation, or bring religious institutional pressure to bear on
those engaging in the practice.

The question about exploitation by marabouts is pertinent. It
is important for all of us to raise human rights and necessary to denounce
exploitation. The Prophet commanded that we educate children, not exploit them....
I see these problems, the children who beg all day and who do not have shoes or
clothes, and it angers me.[231]

Ibrahima Puye, a marabout in Guédiawaye, expressed
concern that the proliferation of forced begging would result in discrediting
the practice of Quranic education within Senegalese society:

I know of the level of exploitation by some other marabouts,
and it makes me angry ... [because] the result is that all marabouts are seen
as the same. Some kids are on the street all day, because their marabouts do
not care about education.... This must stop so that these faux-marabouts do not
sully the name of all daaras.[232]

Yet despite the anger expressed to Human Rights Watch, these
marabouts, and hundreds of others who feel similarly, have yet to take action to
demand regulation and accountability from the government or religious
hierarchy.[233]
In January 2010, the spokesperson for the Tijaniyya brotherhood voiced
opposition to rampant forced begging; however, the statement was not
accompanied by concrete action.[234]
Leaders of the other brotherhoods have yet to even publicly object to the
practice. As expressed by one Senegalese humanitarian worker, “If leaders
of the two great brotherhoods in Senegal said ‘no more forced child
begging,’ there would be no more forced begging.”[235]

In contrast to Senegal, religious authorities in
Guinea-Bissau have begun to speak out against the practice of sending children
to daaras in Senegal. Alhadji Alonso Faty, the first vice-president of the High
Islamic Council (Conselho Superior Islâmico) in Guinea-Bissau, was
one of a half dozen religious leaders who took part in a commission that
investigated the conditions of talibés in Senegal, which he said shocked
and “revolted” him and his colleagues.[236]
The commission presented their findings on national television and urged parents
to keep their children in Guinea-Bissau. The president of the National
Community of Islamic Youth (Comunidade Nacional da JuventudeIslâmica,
CNJI) said that her organization had worked closely with imams in Bissau and
cited as concrete results the discussion of sending children to Senegal during
the Friday prayer and on radio broadcasts.[237]
The head imam in Bafatá, the second-largest city in Guinea-Bissau, told
Human Rights Watch that he had publicly expressed his opposition to sending
children to Senegal and advised families against it.[238]

Despite these efforts, marabouts continue to bring hundreds,
likely thousands, of children from Guinea-Bissau into Senegal each year. The
CNJI president acknowledged that sensitization efforts were mostly concentrated
in the capital of Bissau and its surroundings, while the vast majority of
cross-border movement takes place in the regions of Bafatá and
Gabú, in the east.[239]
More importantly, all of these religious leaders expressed that, even in the
case of child trafficking, they were reluctant to involve the state and press
for criminal charges to be brought against perpetrators.

Government of Senegal

The state is the primary entity responsible for protecting
the rights of children within its borders, something which the government of
Senegal has failed to do with respect to tens of thousands of talibés.
In 2007, the government established the Partnership for the Withdrawal and
Reinsertion of Street Children (Partenariat pour le Retrait et la
Réinsertion des Enfants de la Rue, PARRER), a coordinating body of government
ministries, civil society, religious groups, and aid agencies to help address
the problem of street children, including the talibés. While PARRER has
commissioned and undertaken studies on the number of begging children in
Senegal and effective response strategies, it focuses, as its president told
Human Rights Watch, “not on the government, [but] on prevention and
building social mobilization.”[240]
In January 2010, the state signed a 23 million CFA ($50,000) partnership with
PARRER, for the coordinating body to continue prevention work.[241]

While improved funding to remove children from the street
and to sensitize parents is noteworthy, the government continues to neglect
other, crucially important responses that could serve as a deterrent. Central
to the widespread neglect and abuse of the talibés is the government’s
failure to inspect and regulate the daaras and to require that children access
a well-rounded education, much less investigate and prosecute marabouts engaged
in the abuse and exploitation of children.

Lack of Regulation

With the exception of a few modern daaras, none of the
Quranic schools in Senegal are subject to any form of government regulation, be
it regarding the curriculum, living conditions, or standards of health. The
government does not require registration of the daara or the children in the
daara, nor are there requirements regarding hours of learning; subjects taught;
teacher qualifications; student-to-teacher ratio; the quality of the structure
where children live and learn; or provision of clean water, nutrition, and
healthcare.

Not surprisingly, this has allowed for the proliferation of
daaras and marabouts, including those who appear to have little interest in
educating children. The government’s failure to regulate the daaras has
contributed to every human rights abuse endured by the talibés
documented in this report. It can only begin to protect these children if it is
enacts legislation to register and regulate all daaras, creating adequate
mechanisms to monitor compliance, and then exercise its power to close daaras
in which children are forced to beg, brutalized, and subjected to conditions that
endanger their education and health.

The need for regulation has long been discussed by
Senegalese government officials, the diplomatic community, and aid agencies.
Various ministries, particularly the Ministry of Education, have hosted and
attended tens of conferences, seminars, and workshops on Quranic education in
Senegal.[242]
In 2004, the Daara Inspection Directorate was established within the Ministry
of Education; however, the unit did not become operational until 2008.
Furthermore, its mandate is very limited: the daaras subject to inspection are “modern”
daaras.[243]
Traditional daaras and urban residential daaras—which one inspector referred
to as “daaras outside the law”—are not overseen.[244]
Expansion plans for modern daaras, discussed below, will increase the number of
daaras subject to regulation, but will still not impact government oversight
over the daaras that are the subject of this report. While the government
formally recognized all Quranic schools in February 2010, recognition was not
coupled with regulation.[245]
As a result, it is precisely the daaras most prominently associated with
exploitation and abuse that remain outside of the state’s regulatory
reach.

As long ago as 1978, a seminar at the Islamic Institute in
Dakar, attended by high-level officials of the Ministry of Education,[246]
recommended that Quranic school teachers should meet well-defined professional
criteria; that pedagogy should be established; and that there should be requirements
for opening and operating daaras.[247]
However, when interviewed by Human Rights Watch, one high-level official in the
Ministry of Family stated: “It is impossible for the state to regulate
immediately. It must first gain the marabouts’ trust [and] reflect
further on the institution of daaras.”[248]Three decades after leading Islamic authorities in Senegal led a call for
regulation to eliminate the then-newly burgeoning exploitation of children, the
government still professes a need to further study the issue—now with
tens of thousands of children affected.

Eschewing Accountability

State authorities in Senegal have also failed to investigate
and hold accountable marabouts implicated in abuse and neglect. In 2005, the
government passed a law that criminalized forcing another into begging for
financial gain, under penalty of a large fine and imprisonment for between two
and five years.[249]
Five years later, no government official interviewed by Human Rights Watch could
identify a single instance when the law was applied to sanction a marabout
solely for the practice of forced begging.

One high-level official in the Directorate for the
Protection of Children’s Rights, within the Ministry of Family, explained
to Human Rights Watch the two choices the state has identified to address forced
child begging:

Either the state applies the [anti-forced begging] law with
rigor—and is in a situation where it arrests hundreds, perhaps thousands
of marabouts—or the state works with some marabouts, who can then look at
others and say, “It’s not like this, it’s like this.” We
have chosen the second option, because otherwise too large a number would be
implicated; it is just not possible or optimal.[250]

It is not clear why these are the only two options. An
influential assemblywoman, who disagreed with the state’s reluctance, noted
that the state could hold accountable the most exploitative or abusive
marabouts through imprisonment and fines, and use alternative sanctions like
public shaming for others. Most importantly, she noted, the state is obligated
to take the children out of the abusive environment and return them to their
families.[251]
Indeed, determining the most exploitative marabouts requires only simple
interviews with talibés who are begging outside of their daara, to
determine the quota and the punishment for failing to bring the quota.

Beyond failing to punish marabouts for forced begging, state
authorities have demonstrated a reluctance to launch and follow through with
criminal proceedings, even when marabouts engage in excessive physical abuse
against talibés. In the few cases that have resulted in sentencing,
judges have only imposed short prison terms. Article 298 of the penal code
states that anyone who voluntarily injures or strikes a child under 15 years of
age, excluding “minor assaults,” shall be punished with
imprisonment and a fine. The findings in this report demonstrate that many
marabouts abuse their talibés in a manner far beyond a “minor
assault.” Yet for each year between 2005 and 2009, fewer than five
arrests of marabouts were made for physical abuse against talibés.[252]
Government officials with the Ministry of Justice in Mbour and Kolda said that
they could not remember a single case in which a marabout was brought before
the tribunal for physically abusing a talibé.[253]

Cases resulting in criminal proceedings and punishment have
almost exclusively been those in which a talibé was beaten to death or
near-death. A marabout who beat a talibé to death was sentenced to four
years imprisonment in 2007; and a marabout who beat a talibé to
near-death in 2008 was sentenced to three years in prison.[254]
One of the few cases in which the perpetrator received a substantial punishment
was in 2008, when an assistant Quranic teacher was sentenced to life in prison for
torturing and gruesomely suffocating a talibé in his father’s
daara.[255]

Fear of Backlash

As noted in the background
section of this report, religious leaders wield enormous social, political, and
economic power in Senegal. Almost every humanitarian worker and many government
officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch described how the brotherhoods’
power underscores the government’s lack of political will to ensure that
relevant ministry personnel—notably from the Ministries of Interior,
Justice, and Education—both regulate and hold marabouts accountable for
abuse and exploitation. One government official in the Ministry of Family told
Human Rights Watch:

The state has made efforts, but is very sensitive to the
issue, particularly in terms of punishment. The grand marabouts—the
leaders of the brotherhoods—this involves them, even if indirectly. If
you touch any of the marabouts, you touch the brotherhoods, and that is very
difficult here. You lose votes, maybe you lose office, and you face trouble.[256]

One high-level government official told Human Rights Watch
that in 2005 she publicly pushed for the prosecution of a marabout who had
severely beaten a three-year-old talibé. While the marabout ultimately
received a two-year prison sentence, the government official received multiple
death threats by telephone. The official noted that her colleagues are afraid
to take the same risks.[257]
Similarly, an individual who runs a center for talibés in Mbour
described how she faced threats and ostracism from marabouts and the local
community for trying to press charges regarding the rape of a young
talibé.[258]

Social pressure, in addition to outright threats, reduces
the number of cases brought before the authorities. One man who dared to file
charges after his son was brutally beaten by a marabout was shunned by his
village and his own father, who told an Associated Press journalist: “[The
beating] was an accident and my son had no right to humiliate the marabout....
The day they took the marabout to prison, it hurt me so much it was as if they
had come to jail me.”[259]

While individuals may endure threats and social pressure for
taking action against marabouts, these concerns are no excuse for the
Senegalese government, whose support could reduce reprisals. One government
official in the Ministry of Justice expressed this sentiment to Human Rights
Watch:

There is a great fear of the grand marabouts, but why? This
is a law about child protection. It is necessary to apply the text of the
law—poverty and religion are not excuses for throwing a child on the
street, for making money off a child.[260]

Assistance for Religious Education

Many parents refuse to send their children to state schools due
to the curriculum’s lack of Quranic instruction and the imposition of
informal school fees. In recognition of the former, in 2004 the government
amended the education law to allow for religious instruction in state schools.[261]
The government has also built state-funded “modern” daaras in which
Quranic studies are combined with Arabic, French, and subjects such as mathematics
and science. With funding assistance from international partners, the Ministry
of Education in 2010 began the construction of modern daaras to number 100 by
2012, each of which will accommodate around 300 students. According to the plan,
the state will establish and regulate the curriculum, teacher training and
standards, and health and safety requirements. The schools will be subjected to
inspection by state officials and, if they fail to meet standards, can be ordered
to close. According to the Ministry of Education, this will satisfy the state’s
responsibility regarding universal primary education for these children, while
accommodating parental preferences.[262]

While the initiative shows many promising attributes, it is
not a solution for the vast majority of exploited talibés. As noted by an
inspector in the Ministry of Education, more than 1,600 daaras have already
applied to be chosen as one of the 100 to “modernize.”[263]
Moreover, those marabouts interested in personal financial gain at the expense
of education are unlikely to apply in the first place, because they can reap
far greater profits than a state-employed teacher. The result is that while the
right to education will be extended to an important number of children, the
impact on the tens of thousands of talibés toiling on the streets will
be minimal. Their daaras will remain unregulated under current government plans,
and additional daaras “outside the law” will very likely be opened.

Plans to expand modern daaras must be paralleled with
efforts to ensure that state education is accessible and attractive to children
and parents, as well as a determined effort by state authorities to close
daaras marked by exploitation and abuse and sanction those who have committed
or allowed such abuse. Addressing the widespread exploitation and abuse of
children cannot be postponed during the decades it will take to extend “modernization”
to the vast majority of daaras in Senegal.

Lack of Coherent Response

A final problem that has plagued the Senegalese government
is its diffuse and uncoordinated response to the exploitation of
talibés. Multiple officials from national and international
organizations told Human Rights Watch that a major impediment to effective
state action is that the government response is spread over the Ministries of
Family, Education, Justice, Interior, Social Affairs, and even Foreign Affairs
with respect to Guinea-Bissau—not to mention dozens of directorates within
these ministries—without a clear leader. Officials interviewed by Human
Rights Watch felt that the response was at worst contradictory, but more often
simply incoherent, with officials in one ministry unaware of other government
initiatives.[264]
Given the gravity of the problem in Senegal, there is a need to identify one
official as a focal point to develop a coordinated strategy.

Government of
Guinea-Bissau

While the government of Guinea-Bissau has taken some
meaningful steps to combat the illegal cross-border movement of talibés
into Senegal, efforts remain hesitant and marred by insufficient financing.
Most importantly, the government has lacked the will to sanction marabouts who
move children across the border in a manner that violates domestic laws and
international human rights norms. Furthermore, the Bissau-Guinean government
has largely ignored a burgeoning domestic problem of begging talibés.
Underpinning both cross-border movement and forced begging is the government’s
failure to ensure the right to education for many children.

Insufficient Action to Address
Illegal Cross-Border Migration

After decades of ignoring the
mass exodus of Bissau-Guinean children to daaras in Senegal, where thousands
have been abused and exploited, the government of Guinea-Bissau finally formed
a National Committee to Fight against the Trafficking in Persons (National
Trafficking Committee) in 2008 and acknowledged the severity of the problem.[265]
Since then, the government has taken positive steps to reduce the illegal
movement of children to Senegal, including through training border guards and
civil police. Yet action remains limited and slow. The government has left
police woefully underfunded to combat the problem, has failed to criminalize
child trafficking, and has avoided accountability efforts.

Border Efforts: Improving at Border Posts, Lacking Elsewhere

The National Trafficking Committee has conducted training
for civil and border police, and immigration and customs personnel, with some
positive results. The commissioner of the civil police force in Bafatá region,
perhaps the principal departure point for marabouts and talibés, told
Human Rights Watch that in 2007 and 2008, civil and border police stopped
around 200 talibés at the border and returned them home. They also
arrested nine individuals, either marabouts or someone tasked by the marabout,
who were moving the children across the border.[266]
In 2009, according to the commissioner and confirmed by the leading humanitarian
organization in the region, less trafficking through official posts resulted in
the police stopping fewer children and only arresting two marabouts.[267]

While the commissioner felt that this reduction was in part
due to reduced overall illegal cross-border movement, he acknowledged that it
was also a result of “marabouts better hiding themselves and the children
when they are going across.”[268]
The police commissioner in Gabú further explained:

There are different explanations for fewer captures. The
first is that trafficking has slowed. The second is that the people moving
these children have new methods. They used to go through the two official border
posts; now, they travel by hundreds of clandestine crossings. Instead of taking
20 children, they take two or three. And they now cross at night, because they
know that informers will disclose their location during the day.[269]

Indeed, several children interviewed by Human Rights Watch
described crossing the border at night, and one recalled having to walk a long
distance with a grand talibé to pass the border clandestinely, before
being met by the marabout with a car in Senegal.[270]

A senior police official also acknowledged that efforts to
stop child trafficking through official posts remained hampered by bribe-taking
officials.[271]
Moreover, a humanitarian organization director who assists in border police
trainings described receiving phone calls from border officials inquiring as to
whether individuals could pass without children’s paperwork—suggesting
both the need for further police training, but also the improvements that have
led some to recognize a potential problem and seek guidance.[272]

Police face their biggest problem in combating the illegal
cross-border movement of children, however, from the lack of funding by the
Bissau-Guinean government. Police and border officials in Bafatá region
told Human Rights Watch that they collectively had just one car and one motorbike;
in Gabú, there was one car, one motorbike, and one bicycle. As Bafatá’s
police commissioner described, “If the car is on mission elsewhere, and
we receive a call about the movement of children across the border, we are
immobile—we cannot do anything.”[273]

Lack of Legal Framework and Accountability

The lack of laws specifically criminalizing trafficking in
Guinea-Bissau severely undermines efforts to reduce child trafficking, worsened
by a lack of accountability for marabouts who illegally move children into
Senegal.

At this writing, there is no law in Guinea-Bissau that criminalizes
trafficking, including child trafficking. There is, however, a draft law. The
government focal person for the National Trafficking Committee, as well as a
UNICEF child protection officer assisting on the issue, expressed optimism that
the legislature would pass the law during the first half of 2010, but admitted
that the process has already been delayed several times.[274]

At present, arrests are based on border requirements and violations
of penal code provisions including kidnapping and “abuse of confidence.”[275]
Under Bissau-Guinean law, a non-parent taking a child across the border must
present a signed declaration from both parents indicating their approval and a
stated purpose.[276]
Quranic school education is a legitimate purpose according to the law, but a
government official said that both the parents and the marabout must state that
the child will not beg and will not be beaten.[277]
When these requirements are not met, the cross-border movement is illegal, and,
according to the law, the marabout should be arrested and taken before a
tribunal.

In practice, this rarely happens. Humanitarian officials who
work closely on the issue told Human Rights Watch that no case of a marabout
attempting to illegally move children across the border has gone all the way
through trial, much less been judged and criminally punished.[278]
While the humanitarian officials cited a lack of political will as the primary
explanation, the state’s focal person on the National Trafficking
Committee cited the lack of legislation specifically sanctioning the practice
as the main impediment and assured: “When the [anti-trafficking] law
exists, it will be for everyone—marabouts will not be treated differently
than anyone else. The law is the law, and the law will be applied to everyone
the same.”[279]

Growing Forced Begging Problem in Guinea-Bissau

Numerous aid workers as well as representatives from UNICEF
and the National Community of Islamic Youth told Human Rights Watch that the
problem of forced begging in Guinea-Bissau has risen dramatically within the
last five years, particularly in the capital.[280]
The prevalence of tens of begging talibés, with a forced quota, was
confirmed by Human Rights Watch in several cities, notably Bissau and
Gabú.[281]

At present, the Bissau-Guinean government has failed to take
concrete action to combat the rising problem. Unlike in Senegal, forced begging
is neither criminalized in domestic law nor defined as a worst form of child
labor.[282]
The government’s principal response, according to multiple state
officials, is sensitization against the practice of forced begging, combined
with exploratory efforts into offering financial assistance for madrasas, the
Bissau-Guinean equivalent to modern daaras in Senegal.[283]
Human Rights Watch urges the Bissau-Guinean government to look carefully at the
example of Senegal, where decades of “alternative solutions” and avoiding
accountability have served to embolden the perpetrators and resulted in ever-growing
numbers of victims.

Denying the Right to Education

Under Bissau-Guinean law, primary education should be
compulsory and free, in accordance with international law. Yet when free
primary education was introduced in the mid-2000s, the government was
unprepared for the enormous number of children who entered school for the first
time. The state, recovering from a decade of instability, found itself unable
to cover the costs of teachers, materials, and buildings. While the law prescribes
education to be “free,” representatives of multiple organizations
working on education issues with the government said that informal fees,
including inscription and monthly fees, are widespread. The fees force many
parents to remove their children from state school and send them to a Quranic
school, in either Guinea-Bissau or Senegal, where parents were not responsible
for any costs.[284]
As a result of this and other barriers to accessing education, more than 60
percent of children in Guinea-Bissau are not enrolled in state school.[285]

Human Rights Watch interviewed eight children in two
different village residential daaras in Guinea-Bissau. Seven of the eight had
previously attended state school, combining regular school subjects with
Quranic studies in their home village, until their parents could no longer
cover the state school fees. Six of the seven who were previously in state
school said that both they and their parents would have preferred that they
continue attending state school and Quranic school at home.[286]
While the Bissau-Guinean government certainly faces financial constraints, it
must take positive steps toward the realization of the right to education.

As in Senegal, many families in Guinea-Bissau emphasize
religious learning at least equally to, if not greater than, state school
education. For these families, the government should work with leading Islamic
organizations in Guinea-Bissau to regulate and standardize Quranic schools,
with a view to ensure educational quality, adequate living conditions, and no
exploitation.

Although the project remains in its infancy, the Bissau-Guinean
government has started to take steps toward this goal. In September 2009, the
government, under the direction of the Institute for the Development of
Education (Instituto Nacional para o Desenvolvimento da Educaçao
National, INDE), formulated an action plan for the integration of madrasas[287]
into the national education system. The plan calls for a consistent curriculum
and teacher standards, as well as state subsidies. While these principles have
been clarified, ambiguities remain, including whether madrasas will be
stand-alone schools with full state school curriculum, or an exclusively
religious school associated with a nearby state school. Moreover, as described
by several aid workers, it remains unclear how the government plans to fund these
initiatives, since 60 percent of its children remain outside the education
system largely due to already inadequate funding.

Parents Responsible for
Neglect and Abuse

Parents’ treatment of the children they choose to send
hundreds of kilometers away to marabouts ranges from neglect to knowing
complicity in abuse. In some cases, parents are indeed unaware of the abuse
endured by their children—in part due to deliberate obfuscation by the
marabout—but in others, they willingly send or return their children to a
situation they know to be abusive.

Parents interviewed by Human Rights Watch gave three primary
motivations for entrusting a child to a marabout. First, every parent
interviewed stressed their desire for the child to memorize the Quran. Second,
many parents stated that they could not financially support the child, and thus
chose to confide him to a marabout. Finally, some parents stated that the
marabout “demanded” the child, and that since the marabout was an
authority figure—often an elder, respected relative or community
member—they “could not say no.”

In general, talibés in urban residential daaras originate
from some of the poorest, rural regions of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau. In Kolda
region—from where the largest number of talibés in Senegal
hail—the average household has less than a dollar a day (278 CFA, or US$0.60)
to spend per person. Seventy-three percent of household expenditures are
dedicated to food, leaving 5 percent and 3 percent, respectively, for health
and education.[288]
Pressed financially, some parents send their children ostensibly to learn the
Quran, but also to alleviate household expenditures. One father who sent three
of his nine children to learn the Quran told Human Rights Watch:

I would prefer that my children stay by my side, but I did
not have the means to keep them all here.... It was for economic reasons that I
sent them. When you confide a child to the marabout, the marabout is in charge
of food and clothing....[289]

The president of a Senegalese organization that works to
sensitize parents, communities, and religious leaders regarding children’s
rights in Islam and the risks of sending their children away, explained to
Human Rights Watch:

There are a number of people directly responsible for the
well-being of these children who are not fulfilling their roles. Here is an
example. A father has two children—he sends one to French school and one
to Quranic school. For the child in French school, he takes care of food,
healthcare, school fees, a place to sleep ... everything. For the child in Quranic
school, he takes care of nothing. He hands the child over to the marabout and
then takes no part in the child’s well-being. Why, in the name of
culture, is this okay?[290]

Indeed, several parents interviewed by Human Rights Watch
believed that they had no responsibilities once they confided their child to
the marabout. One father of two talibés said, “When I handed [my
children] over to the marabout, I gave them to him. They are his responsibility
now. If you have questions, you should go ask him—I do not have any
answers.”[291]
A mother in another village likewise said that she was no longer responsible
for the child with a marabout, and that the researcher should speak with him.[292]
The overwhelming number of talibés interviewed by Human Rights Watch did
not want to leave their family and expressed mild to severe feelings of
abandonment, amplified by the fact that, despite the ease of mobile phone
communication, they had not spoken with their parents since leaving the
village.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child assigns to parents
the primary responsibility to ensure “within their abilities and
financial capacities, the conditions of living necessary for the child’s
development.”[293]
At present, the parents of thousands of exploited and abused talibés are
failing to meet this obligation. These parents provide no assistance to the
marabout for the child’s physical development and fail to maintain
contact to aid the child’s emotional development, much less monitor the
child’s welfare.

In many cases, parents appear to be unaware of the severity
of abuses that their children suffer or are likely to suffer in a daara. In
Human Rights Watch’s interviews with talibés, the marabout was
frequently someone from the talibés’ village of origin; a relative,
either a distant or close one; or someone from or with whom their father
studied the Quran. In very few cases was the marabout someone with whom the
parents, particularly the father, had no prior contact. Parents therefore often
believe that despite the existence of exploitative marabouts, their son’s
marabout will focus on education.

When children are returned to their villages by humanitarian
organizations after running away, some parents are shocked to hear of their
treatment. A village chief in Kolda region who sent one of his nine children to
a marabout in Dakar told Human Rights Watch:

I was not satisfied with what happened when I sent my son
to Dakar. He did not master the Quran and he was tired from begging. He
suffered a great deal there and then ran away. He hid for four years.... When I
spoke to the marabout, he made excuses—he said that my child had become a
bandit. It was another talibé who helped me find my child. I will not
send any more children to marabouts who have relocated to cities.[294]

Malam Baio, the director of SOS Talibé Children in
Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, created a video detailing the conditions and
level of exploitation under which most talibés in Senegal’s cities
live, which he shows to village communities. He told Human Rights Watch that most
parents are appalled when presented with visual evidence of conditions in
daaras. Notwithstanding, some of the same parents send their children to Dakar
daaras anyway.[295]

Many parents are indeed well aware that their children
suffer neglect and abuse. Human Rights Watch interviewed many families who knew
that their children begged long hours, but justified it as necessary for the
marabout to survive and pay rent.[296]
In a recent study in Kolda region, 30 percent of families who had entrusted a
child with a marabout believed that living conditions at the daara were indeed harsher
for the child than those at home.[297]
In these cases, parents are not only implicated in neglect, but also complicit in
abuse.

Most egregious, however, some parents return runaway children
to a marabout known to be abusive. Human Rights Watch documented tens of cases
in which this occurred; in some instances the parents even further beat the
child for having run away.

Adama H. was seven years old in 2008 when he ran away from
his daara in Mbour because of beatings and constant illness. He found his way
home, where he told his parents about the abuse. His parents, particularly his
father, decided immediately to return him to the daara. At merely eight years
old, he fled again. Knowing that home was no refuge, he set out on foot toward
Dakar, 70 kilometers away. A driver eventually brought him to Dakar, where he lived
on the street before a social worker found him. At a shelter for two months
when interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Adama said, “I want to go back home,
but I am afraid, because I don’t want to be sent back to the marabout.”[298]

Another former talibé, Seydou R., 13, told Human
Rights Watch a similar story:

I could not handle the beatings anymore, so I ran away. The
first time I made it home, but my parents brought me back to the daara. I
decided that if I ran away again, I would not go back home. The next two times
I was caught, and the marabout gave the worst beatings for trying to run away.
When I finally succeeded, I walked by foot to Fatick, where I found a vehicle
heading to Dakar and jumped on.[299]

Unable to turn to his parents, Seydou traveled alone to
Dakar, at 12 years old, where he had lived on the street for eight months when
interviewed by Human Rights Watch.[300]
Even if parents can claim not knowing the exploitative conditions in daaras
when first entrusting their child to a marabout, the decision to return a child
to that situation once they are aware of the abuse without question makes
parents complicit in the abuse.

Dozens of national and international humanitarian aid organizations
in Senegal provide a range of services to assist talibés and improve
conditions in daaras. Many have done so for almost a decade. Forms of
assistance include provision of mats for sleeping; water; clothing and shoes;
construction of shelters; food; bath soap, laundry detergent, and disinfectant;
medicines or healthcare assistance; French classes; money to satisfy the
talibés quota; microcredit loans to marabouts to start businesses; and
payment of the marabout’s rent. Given the deplorable conditions in urban
daaras, the aid organizations’ efforts are certainly understandable, but
they have unintended consequences: by and large, they incentivize marabouts to
come to the cities—where begging is prevalent—and they reduce the
responsibility of the state, families, and religious authorities. Moreover,
many marabouts continue to force their talibés to beg, thereby obtaining
even greater net income as the aid organizations help eliminate costs. In extreme
cases, marabouts sell the food and medicines they receive from aid
organizations. Many organizations have failed to halt assistance to marabouts who
continue to exploit talibés under their care, much less report such
marabouts to the authorities for abuse and neglect.

Large-scale giving by aid organizations, with no strings
attached, encourages village marabouts to come to the cities, where the
overwhelming majority of assistance is provided. A marabout in a Kolda village described
this enthusiasm to Human Rights Watch:

Part of this [mass migration of marabouts to cities] is
because on television programs, you see images of marabouts benefiting from NGO
and state aid in Dakar. This motivates many marabouts to go to the cities, as
they think they will benefit.[301]

Rather than assisting marabouts who remain in villages,
where begging is almost nonexistent, most humanitarian assistance has had the
effect of pulling marabouts and their talibés to cities, where begging
is omnipresent. Several organizations, including UNICEF, Terre des Hommes, and
Intermonde, are working with the Senegalese government’s project against
the worst forms of child labor in order to return several urban daaras to
villages. Other groups, like ONG Gounass and Tostan, assist village daaras in
particular or community development more generally and encourage marabouts and
families to keep children in their villages. But the vast majority of money
assisting daaras continues to be funneled into urban daaras, particularly in
Dakar region.

Some marabouts appear to effectively use the assistance to
reduce or eliminate their talibés’ begging hours and greatly
improve the health conditions in the daara. Human Rights Watch visited several
daaras supported by aid organizations where every child could be seen wearing
clean clothes and shoes, there were blackboards and new books, and children did
not beg for more than food.[302]
In other daaras, marabouts drastically reduced hours of begging and told Human
Rights Watch that, with a little more assistance, they would stop forcing
children to beg for money altogether.[303]

However, according to interviews with talibés and aid
agencies, many marabouts who receive assistance do not adjust the practice of
begging at all, but merely use the assistance to obtain even greater net income.
As detailed above, current talibés from one Dakar daara told Human
Rights Watch that their marabout sold medicines given by an aid agency,
requiring the talibés to pay for their own medicines through greater
hours of begging.[304]
Moreover, several people who formerly assisted one international aid
organization expressed grave concerns about that organization’s decision
to support daaras through assistance including loans and paying the marabout’s
rent. They stated that although the organization told marabouts to cease
forcing talibés to beg in return for the provisions, they routinely encountered
talibés from these daaras begging on the street. Their opinion was that
the organization was indeed “sustaining and encouraging the practice of
faux-marabouts.”[305]
Finally, one aid agency’s internal review of its three-year program—no
longer in existence—to assist scores of daaras acknowledged that some
daaras made no effort to either improve sanitation or reduce begging despite
considerable assistance provided.[306]

The internal review noted that a serious shortcoming of its
program was the lack of consequences for marabouts who failed to demonstrate
progress in reducing the hours of begging.[307]
Indeed, one employee told Human Rights Watch that when a marabout was caught forcing
children to beg after the agreed-upon hours, the sole response was to put an “X”
down in one of the organization’s records; no matter how many bad marks
the marabout received, the organization never ended its support, claiming that
it was trying to “build confidence among the marabouts.”[308]
There is little doubt that significant assistance, with no serious efforts at
conditioning the assistance or holding accountable those who abuse it, serves
to encourage unscrupulous marabouts to start daaras and exploit children.

UNICEF’s current position is not to directly support
urban daaras through material means, but rather to work with families,
marabouts, and communities on prevention efforts to keep children in their
villages and address the issue on a systemic level, including through assisting
the Ministry of Family to relocate several urban daaras to villages, improving
access to the public education system, and improving the financial standing of
families and communities so that children are able to remain at home.[309]
While most humanitarian organizations have not followed UNICEF’s lead by
halting direct assistance to urban daaras, they must take greater efforts to
ensure that assistance is not incentivizing the exploitation of more
talibés.

Even when direct assistance improves daara conditions, the
programs are generally not sustainable over the long term, and diminish the
responsibility of marabouts, parents, religious institutions, and the state.
The internal review of the same aid organization’s talibé program stated
that sustainability was the most significant obstacle it faced, acknowledging
that once program funding ended and provisions to the marabouts accordingly ceased,
most daaras returned to their pre-assistance state of begging and lack of
sanitation.[310]
With tens of thousands of begging talibés in Senegal’s cities, aid
agencies simply cannot finance a permanent end to exploitation. Indeed, given
the continued rise in the number of talibés forced to beg on the
streets, such assistance has proved largely ineffective, and reduces the
obviousness of the otherwise indisputable need for a government response to the
problem.

Finally, while many international and national humanitarian organizations
played a crucial role in pressuring the Senegalese government to pass the 2005
anti-trafficking law that criminalized forced begging, many have subsequently failed
to insist on accountability or denounce the government’s utter failure to
enforce the law. The humanitarian organization Samusocial Senegal stands out as
an exemplary outlier, informing Human Rights Watch that its standard response when
members of its staff encounter a child who has been subject to physical abuse
is to inform the authorities.[311]
By contrast, directors of more than 10 humanitarian organizations working on
the talibé problem told Human Rights Watch that pressure for
accountability was at present unnecessary, counterproductive, or even a waste
of time because it had fallen on the state’s deaf ears for so long.[312]
One director of a national organization went so far as to say that sanctions
would be unfair: “You cannot sanction someone who does not understand or
know why they are being sanctioned—that is what it would be to
criminalize or imprison most of the marabouts.”[313]

International and national humanitarian organizations in
Senegal and Guinea-Bissau have thus adopted an approach of so-called “constructive
engagement” and prevention toward the abuse and neglect inflicted by the
marabouts. In so doing they have largely failed to report cases of abuse and
neglect to the relevant authorities, much less demand accountability for
abusive marabouts.

For their part, UNICEF, in both Senegal and Guinea-Bissau,
has contributed to addressing the abuses against the talibés over the
last decade. It has commissioned and led several studies on the prevalence of
child begging in Senegal and on underlying reasons for child migration and confiage.
It has, as discussed, also worked extensively on the protection of vulnerable
children, including talibés, through prevention efforts. However, while
UNICEF’s country operations in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau have lobbied the
respective governments to pass legislation against trafficking and forced
begging, they have been hesitant to follow with sustained pressure to apply the
laws, particularly regarding prosecution and punishment for forced
begging—a hesitancy that stems from concerns about damaging working
relationships with government officials over this sensitive issue.[314]
Human Rights Watch believes that as the preeminent child protection body,
UNICEF must couple its noteworthy prevention work with sustained calls for
accountability, as the exploitation and abuse of the talibés will only
end with both types of action.

Ultimately, despite the efforts of many humanitarian
organizations and community associations, the phenomenon of begging
talibés continues to grow. As the director of one large humanitarian
organization who formerly ran programs that directly assisted daaras, but who
has now shifted his strategy to relocating daaras back to the villages, told
Human Rights Watch:

Everyone is profiting from this status quo. International
NGOs have manipulated the situation and are receiving their funding. National
partners are profiting, as they are funded for implementing programs. Marabouts
are profiting. Every NGO is doing something, but it is not clear how
they are helping given that the number of begging talibés continues to
rise. Everyone is profiting, everyone but the talibés.[315]

Relevant International and National Law

The abuses perpetrated against the talibés represent
violations of international and national law. The various abuses suffered by
the talibés qualify under international human rights law as a practice
similar to slavery, a worst form of child labor, and, in hundreds if not
thousands of cases per year, child trafficking. In addition, abuses suffered by
the talibés violate rights guaranteed in the Convention on the Rights of
the Child, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and the
Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. Senegal has passed several laws to
harmonize its domestic law with international human rights standards, but there
has been a complete lack of will to apply these laws.

Child
Servitude or Slavery

The UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery,
the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (Supplementary
Convention) defines practices similar to slavery as:

Any institution or practice whereby a child ... is
delivered by either or both of his natural parents or by his guardian to
another person ... with a view to the exploitation of the child ... [or] his
labour.[316]

Children are routinely delivered by parents or guardians to a
marabout. The central question is whether the practice involves “a view
to the exploitation of the child.” The use of “a view”
in the definition indicates that exploitation need only be one of the purposes
for the child being delivered. As the evidence of abuses and concomitant
benefits for marabouts described in this report makes clear, exploitation is
certainly one of the marabout’s motivations when receiving the child in
the majority of urban residential daaras. Therefore, the threshold is met.[317]

To combat these practices similar to slavery, the
Supplementary Convention requires states parties to “take all practicable
and necessary legislative and other measures to bring about progressively and
as soon as possible the complete abolition or abandonment of [these] institutions
and practices.”[318]
Senegal has failed to take such measures to protect the talibés.

Slavery, servitude, and forced labor are also prohibited by
article 8 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.[319]
Article 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights prohibits
“all forms of exploitation and degradation,” including slavery.[320]

Worst
Form of Child Labor

“(a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to
slavery, such as ... forced or compulsory labour;

...

(d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which
it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.”[321]

As discussed above, the practice of forcing children to beg
easily qualifies as a practice similar to slavery. In addition, the work—which
requires long hours on the street, puts children at risk of car accidents and
diseases, and often encourages stealing when a child cannot obtain the quota—qualifies
as a worst form of child labor under subsection (d).

Senegal, a party to ILO Convention 182, has indeed defined
the practice of forced begging, including specific mention of forcing
talibés to beg, as a worst form of child labor.[322]
However, the ILO’s Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions
and Recommendations (CEACR), which oversees states parties’ compliance
with ILO conventions, including the Worst Forms Convention, noted in 2009
Senegal’s failure to enforce its own legislation:

[A]lthough the legislation is in conformity with the [Worst
Forms] Convention ... the phenomenon of child talibés remains a concern
in practice. The Committee expresses concern at the use of these children for
purely economic purposes. It requests the Government to take the necessary
measures to give effect to the national legislation on begging and to punish
marabouts who use children for purely economic purposes.[323]

While the committee’s recommendation for
accountability is important, the committee’s language may leave many
situations that violate the Worst Forms Convention untouched. Few marabouts can
be said to use talibés for “purely”—if one defines
purely as “only”—economic purposes, as there is generally
some, even if minute, educational purpose. At a minimum, accountability must
exist for marabouts who principally use talibés for economic
purposes or who, as the children’s de facto guardian by accepting them
into their care, fail to ensure that their most basic rights are fulfilled.

In contrast to Senegal, the Bissau-Guinean government has
not defined forced child begging as a worst form of child labor.

Child
Trafficking

(c) The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring
or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered “trafficking
in persons”....[324]

Under international law, threat, coercion, deception, and
other means are not necessary to meet the threshold of trafficking when a child
is involved. Every talibé interviewed by Human Rights Watch was
transported or received by the marabout. Therefore, to be defined as
trafficking under the protocol, the marabout must receive the child “for
the purpose of exploitation.” In article 3(a), the Trafficking Protocol
defines exploitation as including, at a minimum, “practices similar to
slavery”[325]—which
the talibés’ situation has been shown to meet.

However, as compared to the Supplementary Convention, which
required only “a view to exploitation,” the Trafficking
Protocol’s requirement that the child’s movement be with “the
purpose of exploitation” appears to be a higher standard.[326]
Even this threshold is almost certainly met in tens of cases documented by
Human Rights Watch, in which marabouts lied to family members to keep a child
in the daara, brutalized talibés who tried to run away or asked to be
returned home, and deceived parents about the conditions in the daara. A strong
case can likewise be made that in daaras where marabouts impose the highest
quotas and the longest hours of begging—largely neglecting Quranic
education—the principal purpose is exploitation.

The requirements for satisfying the child trafficking
definition are therefore fully met in many cases, and largely met in others,
leaving Human Rights Watch to conclude that there are hundreds, if not
thousands, of cases of child trafficking by marabouts of talibés. The
situation in some daaras, where begging is coupled with serious studies, is
more ambiguous under the Trafficking Protocol.

Cairo
Declaration on Human Rights in Islam

The Cairo Declaration, to which Senegal is a supporter,
outlines human rights and related responsibilities deemed in line with the
Quran and Sharia. Its provisions regarding education and exploitation would
appear to interpret the abuses endured by talibés as counter to the
tenets of Islam:

Article 7(a) affirms that “every child has rights
due from the parents, the society and the state to be accorded proper ...
education and material, hygienic and moral care.”[327]
For many talibés, the lack of food and healthcare provisions, even
when extremely sick, represent a denial of this right.

Article 7(b) affords parents the right to choose the form
of education for their children, so long as they take into consideration
the child’s best interests,[328]
but article 9(b) states that “Every human being has a right to
receive both religious and worldly education.”[329]
At present, a number of Senegalese children are failing to receive either
a religious or worldly education, but merely spend long hours begging on
the streets.

Article 11 explicitly forbids the oppression and
exploitation of others.[330]

International Treaties on
Children’s Rights

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the
African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (African
Children’s Charter) lay out the principal responsibilities of the
Senegalese and Bissau-Guinean governments under international law in protecting
and fulfilling the rights of the child.

The Senegalese government is clearly violating its
obligations under the CRC with respect to at least some talibés’
rights to life,[331]
health,[332]
physical and mental development,[333]
education,[334]
recreation and leisure,[335]
protection from economic exploitation,[336]
and protection from sexual abuse.[337]

Article 19 of the CRC also requires the state to protect the
child from “all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse,
neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual
abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person
who has the care of the child (emphasis added).[338]
General Comment No. 8 by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the body
responsible for interpreting the convention, made clear that the requirements
outlined in article 19 apply to corporal punishment in all settings, including
schools.[339]
As outlined in this report, the physical abuse that many marabouts inflict on
talibés is severe and is unquestionably a violation under article 19. The
state has an obligation to protect these talibés, including through
improved legislation, regulation of the daaras, and accountability.[340]

As well as including provisions similar to those in the CRC,
the African Children’s Charter includes several important additional
provisions:

Article 29 requires states to take “all appropriate
measures to prevent” the trafficking of children and “the use
of children in all forms of begging.”[341]

Article 21 calls on states to take “all appropriate
measures to eliminate harmful social and cultural practices” that
affect the well-being and development of the child, focusing particularly
on those “prejudicial to the health or life of the child.”[342]
The practice of Quranic education—or even boarding a child in a
daara—is not in itself harmful; indeed, the modern practice often
marked by exploitation is far removed from the traditional cultural
practice. However, this article makes clear that the Senegalese and
Bissau-Guinean governments cannot hide behind the “cultural” nature
of the practice when they fail to act.

Article 20 defines the duties of parents toward their
children, including: “(a) to ensure that the best interests of the
child are their basic concern at all times; [and] (b) to secure, within
their abilities and financial capacities, conditions of living necessary
to the child’s development.”[343]

The CRC, African Children’s Charter, and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights all contain
provisions requiring states parties to ensure that education leads to the full
development of the child.[344]

Finally, article 29 of the African Charter on Human and
Peoples’ Rights states, “The individual shall ... have the duty ...
to preserve the harmonious development of the family and to work for the
cohesion and respect of the family.”[345]
When marabouts forbid talibés to have contact with their families, or
when marabouts lie to families regarding the well-being of their children, they
violate this duty.

Domestic
Legislation Relevant to the Talibés

Several Senegalese laws are likewise relevant to the
protection of the talibés, including those governing forced begging, trafficking,
abuse, and neglect.

Anti-Trafficking Law

In 2005, the Senegalese government passed Law No. 2005-06,
which outlawed the practice of forced begging. Article 3 of the law states:

Whosoever organizes the begging of another in order to
benefit, or hires, leads, or deceives a person in order to engage him in
begging or to exercise pressure on him to beg ... will be punished by imprisonment
of 2 to 5 years and a fine of 500,000 to 2,000,000 francs [US$1,160 to $4,350]. The
execution of the sentence will not be stayed when the crime is committed
against a minor....[346]

The marabouts of almost all the talibés interviewed
by Human Rights Watch are forcing children to beg for their financial gain. At the
time of this writing, the Senegalese government has failed to punish a single
marabout for violating the provisions of this law, despite its daily occurrence
in cities across Senegal.

In addition to criminalizing forced begging, the 2005 law
formally harmonized Senegalese domestic law with the Trafficking Protocol and made
trafficking punishable by imprisonment of between 5 to 10 years and a fine of 5
to 20 million francs ($11,630 to $46,520).[347]

Senegalese Penal Code
Provisions

Whosoever willfully injures or beats a child under the age
of 15, or who willfully deprives a child of food or care as to endanger his
health, or who commits against a child any violence or assault, except minor
assaults, will be punished by imprisonment of one to five years and a fine of
25,000 to 200,000 francs ($54 to $435).[348]

The penal code prescribes a heightened penalty—up to 10
years imprisonment—if the abuser is a parent or any other person having
authority over the child or acting as the child’s guardian.[349]
Marabouts, as de facto guardians, would qualify under this elevated standard.
While the penal code exempts “minor assaults,” the vast majority of
marabouts described in this report perpetrate physical abuses that cannot be
considered minor. The abuse inflicts severe physical harm, as well as terror,
on the children, the vast majority of whom are under 15 years old and therefore
covered under the statute. Neglect, through the willful deprivation of food or
care, is likewise a common occurrence in many urban residential daaras as
documented in this report.

Acknowledgements

This report was researched and authored by Matthew Wells, a
fellow in the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch. It was reviewed and edited
by Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher; Lois Whitman, children’s
rights director; Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor; and Andrew Mawson, deputy
director of the Program Office. Thomas Gilchrist, senior associate in the
Africa Division, provided editorial and production coordination. The report was
translated into French by Françoise Denayer and Olivier Ervyn, and into
Portuguese by Diana Tarre. Vetting for a faithful translation into French was
provided by Thomas Gilchrist and Peter Huvos, French website editor; and into Portuguese
by Lisa Rimli, researcher in the Africa Division. John Emerson designed the
map. The report was prepared for publication by Grace Choi, publications
director; Anna Lopriore, creative manager; and Fitzroy Hepkins, mail manager.

Human Rights Watch expresses its gratitude to all of the
organizations and individuals who contributed to this research, including:
Isabelle de Guillebon and her colleagues at Samusocial Senegal; Issa Kouyate,
president of Maison de la Gare; Malam Baio, president of SOS Talibé
Children; Miss Joanita, of the Association of the Friends of Children; Mame
Couna Thioye, the program coordinator on children’s rights at Rencontre
africaine pour la defense des droits de l’homme(RADDHO); Mamadou
Ndiaye, a Senegalese scholar on Quranic schools who provided insight into the
practice’s history; and Ibrahim Diallo, who served as a translator throughout
Guinea-Bissau. Many others have asked to remain anonymous given the sensitivity
of work on the talibé issue in Senegal, but their contributions are duly
appreciated.

Human Rights Watch particularly thanks the families, Quranic
teachers, and, most of all, the talibés themselves who were willing to
share their stories.

[1]
This includes three distinct subgroups of the Peuhl, or Fulani, family: the
Toucouleurs, or Fula Toro, who live predominantly in the north and east of
Senegal; the Fulakunda, who live predominantly in eastern Casamance; and the
Fula Jalon, who live predominantly in western Casamance.

[3]
See Ministry of the Economy and Finance, National Agency of Statistics and
Demography (ANSD), Results of the Third General Census of the Population (2002)
(finding approximately 20 percent of the population literate in Arabic,
compared to 37 percent in French).

[5]
Sufism is not a sect of Islam, as adherents are still often either Sunni or
Shia, but rather represents a particular conception of Islam. For background
information, see BBC, Sufism,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/subdivisions/sufism_1.shtml (accessed
February 3, 2010).

[8]
See Codou Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi Brotherhoods in
Senegal,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 73(4),
December 2005, pp. 1103-1104; Cheikh Anta Babou, “Brotherhood solidarity,
education and migration: The role of the dahiras among the Murid Muslim
community of New York,” African Affairs, vol. 101, 2002, p. 153;
Andrew F. Clark, “Imperialism, Independence, and Islam in Senegal and
Mali,” Africa Today, vol. 46, 1999, p. 160.

[9]
See Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi Brotherhoods in
Senegal,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, p. 1104; Christian
Coulon, “The Grand Magal in Touba: A Religious Festival of the Mouride
Brotherhood of Senegal,” African Affairs, vol. 98, 1999, p. 202
(stating that the oath of allegiance of a disciple to his marabout, or sheikh,
is “comparable to the feudal notion of homage”).

[10]
For example, the French exiled the founder of the Muridiyya brotherhood, Sheikh
Amadou Bamba Mbakké, to Gabon (1895-1902) and Mauritania (1903-1907), and
likewise fought with the founder of the Layenne brotherhood, Seydina Laye,
despite his teachings of non-violence. See David Robinson, “Beyond
Resistance and Collaboration: Amadu Bamba and the Murids of Senegal,” Journal
of Religion in Africa, vol. 21(2), 1991, p. 160; Eva Evers Rosander and
David Westerlund, “Senegal,” in David Westerlund and Ingvar
Svanberg, eds., Islam Outside the Arab World (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 83.

[11]
See Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi Brotherhoods in
Senegal,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, p. 1105;
Robinson, “Beyond Resistance and Collaboration: Amadu Bamba and the Murids
of Senegal,” Journal of Religion in Africa, p. 161-62; Lucy
Creevey Behrman, “Muslim Politics and Development in Senegal,” Journal
of Modern African Studies, vol. 15(2), 1977, p. 262.

[12]
See Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi Brotherhoods in Senegal,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, p. 1105; Lucy Creevey, “Islam,
Women and the Role of the State in Senegal,” Journal of Religion in
Africa, vol. 26(3), August 1996, pp. 268-69 (“The French used the
marabouts … to get support for their programs and obedience to their
edicts. The marabouts in their turn received government assistance and even
used French support to eliminate threatening rivals within their brotherhoods.”).

[13]
Benefits included land, unregulated control of Senegal’s informal market,
loans that often did not need to be repaid, and the creation of a de facto free
port zone in Touba, the holy capital of the Mourides. Linda J. Beck, “Reining
in the Marabouts? Democratization and Local Governance in Senegal,” African
Affairs, 2001, p. 612; Coulon, “The Grand Magal in Touba,” African
Affairs, pp. 203-04; Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi
Brotherhoods in Senegal,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
p. 1105.

[14]
Beck, “Reining in the Marabouts?,” African Affairs, p. 612
(noting also that 96 percent of voters in Touba voted for Diouf in that
election).

[15]
See Ibid., p. 613; Frank Wittmann, “Politics, religion and the media: The
transformation of the public sphere in Senegal,” Media, Culture &
Society, vol. 30, 2008, pp. 484-85. At times the relationship between
President Abdoulaye Wade and the Muridiyya brotherhood has appeared to revert
to previous forms of overt religious politicking. Without formally issuing a ndiguel,
the Mouride caliph voiced his support for Wade on national television just
prior to the 2007 presidential vote, stating that a Wade reelection would
result in the completion of Touba’s infrastructural development. Penda
Mbow, “Senegal: The Return of Personalism,” Journal of Democracy,
vol. 19(1), January 2008, p. 161.

[16]
See Beck, “Reining in the Marabouts?,” African Affairs, p.
612, note 28; and Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi
Brotherhoods in Senegal,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
p. 1105 (noting also that “[i]n return, brotherhood leaders are rewarded
with land, technical equipment, and bank loans which may or may not be repaid”).

[17]
Human Rights Watch interviews with a marabout, Guédiawaye, November 21,
2009; with a marabout, Saint-Louis, December 2, 2009; with a marabout and imam,
Saint-Louis, December 2, 2009; with a marabout, Kolda, January 6, 2010; with a marabout,
village of Simtian Samba Koulobale, Kolda region, January 7, 2010; and with a marabout,
Mbour, December 18, 2009.

[19]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Aida Mbodj, former minister of the Family
and current vice-president of the National Assembly, Dakar, February 11, 2010;
with a government official, Mbour, December 18, 2009; with a director of a
local organization working on the talibé issue, Guédiawaye,
November 18, 2009; and with a director of talibé programs for a local
organization, Dakar, November 6, 2009.

[22]
Human Rights Watch interview with Mamadou Ndiaye, director of the Education
Department at the Islamic Institute in Dakar and professor in the Arabic
Department at University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Dakar, January 21, 2010.

[25]
Human Rights Watch interview with Mamadou Ndiaye, January 21, 2010. While a
review of the history of Quranic schools in Senegal shows that economic
exploitation through forced begging is a relatively recent phenomenon, Human
Rights Watch is not in a position to make determinations regarding the prevalence
during the pre-colonial and colonial periods of other abuses currently
associated with many urban residential daaras, including physical abuse and
gross negligence in care. For a discussion of abuses in traditional daaras
prior to independence, see Ware, “Njàngaan: The Daily
Regime of Qur’ânic Students in Twentieth-Century Senegal,” International
Journal of African Historical Studies; and Perry, “Muslim Child
Disciples, Global Civil Society, and Children’s Rights in Senegal,”
Anthropological Quarterly, pp. 56-58.

[26]
Dakar replaced Saint-Louis as the capital of French West Africa in 1902.

[27]
In 1857, in introducing the first law to regulate the daaras in Saint-Louis,
the colonial governor stated that the French government “could not remain
indifferent to the question of educating children from Muslim families and that
since, up to today, no guarantee of knowledge and morality has been demanded of
marabouts, the master of the school, with each free to exercise this profession
and to exercise his way, it is time to end this abuse, in the interest of the
families as well as the children.” Order no. 96: Order on Quranic schools,
Administrative Bulletin of Senegal 1857, June 22, 1857, p. 446.

[28]
Ndiaye, L’Enseignement arabo-islamique au Sénégal, pp.
135-36 (citing, for example, a letter from the governor general of West Africa,
in which he wrote, “We cannot subsidize the Quranic schools and we should
even avoid appearing to encourage the development of a religion whose
adherents, in French West Africa at least, would not be very favorable to our
influence and to the ideas which we are representing here”).

[30]
Ibid., p. 142 (“In imposing the certificate of good morals … the
colonial authority looked to eliminate the marabouts who were hostile to its
politics and who could constitute a restraint against the expansion of its
ideas and its language”). For the requirements of the 1857 order, see Order
no. 96, Administrative Bulletin of Senegal 1857, pp. 445-47.

[31]
Order no. 96, Administrative Bulletin of Senegal 1857, art. 5, p. 446. In 1870,
the French required that within two years, all Quranic schools must teach
French to their students—thereby requiring that the marabout, too, learn
French. Ndiaye, L’Enseignement arabo-islamique au
Sénégal, p. 147.

[36]
See Order no. 254: Order providing a subsidy to Arabic teachers in directly
administrated and regularly authorized Territories, who teach French at least
two hours per day, Administrative Bulletin of Senegal 1906, June 12, 1906, pp.
607-08.

[37]
Ndiaye, L’Enseignement arabo-islamique au Sénégal,
p. 168, and see also p. 170 (citing a report from the Inspector of Public
Education and Muslim Education, which stated that the graduates of the Madrasa
could be used as Quranic school leaders under the authority of the colonial
administration, permitting them “to supplant the marabouts trained
outside of our [system]”). For the order creating the Madrasa, see Order
no. 68: Order creating in Saint-Louis a Madrasa or School of Muslim higher
education, Administrative Bulletin of Senegal 1908, January 15, 1908, pp.
98-99.

[38]
Ndiaye, L’Enseignement arabo-islamique au Sénégal,
p. 169 (quoting the French Inspector of Muslim Education at the time, who wrote:
“In creating the Madrasa, we are trying to create the indigenous
personnel that we need, the magistrates and clerks, not to mention the masters
of Quranic schools and the professors called to teach the elements of our
language and interpret the texts that so far have been interpreted in a manner
hostile to our ideas and our influence”).

[39]
Ibid., p. 181. During the first two years of the student’s education,
French received 10 hours of instruction a week, while Arabic received nine. During
the following two years, French received 10 hours of instruction a week, while
Arabic received six. In teaching Arabic, the school gradually replaced
religious texts with literary texts, with the goal of “secularizing
Muslim education.” Ibid., p. 172.

[46]
Ibid., p. 270. In 1997, the caliph of the Mourides, Serigne Saliou
Mbacké, closed all of the French schools in the city of Touba,
protesting the lack of religious education. Only in 2009, five years after the
Senegalese government changed the education law to permit religious instruction
in state schools, did the new caliph, Serigne Bara Mbacké, signal an
acceptance of the return of state schools to the city. Human Rights Watch
interview with Hameth Sall, daara inspector in the Ministry of Education and department
head at the Islamic Institute, Dakar, February 8, 2010; “Touba: Retour
annoncé d’écoles publiques en langue française,”
Agence Presse Senegalaise, April 6, 2009, http://www.seneweb.com/news/article/22139.php
(accessed February 8, 2010).

[48]
Ibid. A director of a local shelter for runaway talibés echoed many of
these points, stating, “With the crisis in the 1970s and 1980s, with the
drought, there was a strong immigration to cities. It was at this point it
became a form of trade, of financial gain, for many. The entire practice has
become lucrative.” Human Rights Watch interview with the director of a
local humanitarian organization and shelter for vulnerable children, Dakar,
November 6, 2009.

[51]
Human Rights Watch interview with a government official, Mbour, December 19,
2009.

[52]
Human Rights Watch interview with a government official, Kolda, January 8,
2010.

[53]
Human Rights Watch interview with Issa Kouyate, president of Maison de la Gare,
a national humanitarian organization that works with talibés, Saint-Louis,
December 3, 2009. Maison de la Gare is currently performing a census in
Saint-Louis to determine how many talibés are forced to beg and how many
are not. From their substantial work at present, the organization’s
president said that those who are forced to beg clearly outnumber those who do
not. Ibid.

[55]
Of the 139 current talibés interviewed by Human Rights Watch, the
average and median ages were 10 years old, with a range from five to 19 years. Former
talibés who had run away from the daara were separated out from these
statistics, as many have spent months or years in shelters or have returned to
their city or country of origin. Indeed, the average and median ages of the 29
former talibés interviewed were 12 years old, with a range from seven to
18 years. See also UNICEF, the ILO, and the World Bank, Enfants mendiants
dans la région de Dakar, p. 36 (finding that around half of begging
talibés in the region of Dakar were under 10 years old).

[56]
These figures come from the 73 in-depth interviews by Human Rights Watch with
current and former talibés. A number of the talibés interviewed
began their Quranic studies in their village of origin—for a period ranging
from several months to several years—before the decision was made to send
them away from home. Given this report’s focus on the conditions and
abuses against talibés in residential daaras in Senegal’s cities,
the age here reflects the moment at which they began under the care of a
marabout in a city daara. In another study, performed by a large research
institute, researchers similarly found that boys from Kolda region—perhaps
the region in Senegal from which the largest number of talibés
hail—are sent to other parts of the country, particularly to study the
Quran, at an average age of 7.1 years. Draft version of a study on Kolda
region, seen by Human Rights Watch (publication pending).

[57]
Prior to being interviewed, the talibés had spent an average of 3.4
years in their daaras, though this period ranged from only one month to as many
as 12 years.

[58]
A 2007 study with a larger sample size found that, in the region of Dakar, 58
percent of begging talibés were from Senegal, 30 percent were from
Guinea-Bissau, and 10 percent were from Guinea. UNICEF, the ILO, and the World
Bank, Enfants mendiants dans la région de Dakar, pp. 37-38.

[59]
Of those from Senegal, the largest numbers were from the regions of Kolda,
Kaolack, and Diourbel. See also UNICEF, the ILO, and the World Bank, Enfants
mendiants dans la région de Dakar, p. 37 (finding that 15 percent of
begging talibés in Dakar were from Kolda region, 11 percent were from
Kaolack region, 7 percent were from Thiès region, 7 percent were from
Ziguinchor region, and 5 percent were from Diourbel region).

[60]
See also UNICEF, the ILO, and the World Bank, Enfants mendiants dans la
région de Dakar, p. 39 (finding that 69 percent of begging
talibés in Dakar were Peuhl, approximately 25 percent were Wolof, and 5
percent were Serer).

[61]
Of those from Senegal, the largest numbers were from the regions of Saint-Louis
(particularly from the Fouta Toro area), Matam, and Kolda.

[62]
Of those from Senegal, the largest numbers were from Kaolack, Thiès, and
Louga.

[63]
A humanitarian worker at a shelter for runaway talibés in Mbour confirmed
from his experience that the majority of talibés in Mbour come from the
regions of Kaolack and Thiès in Senegal, followed by the Gambia and
Guinea-Bissau. He said he encountered far more Wolof talibés in Mbour
than Peuhls. Human Rights Watch interview with Ablaye Sall, social worker at Vivre
Ensemble, Mbour, December 14, 2009.

[66]
Human Rights Watch interview with the director of a local humanitarian
organization and shelter for vulnerable children, Dakar, November 6, 2009. A
number of other interviewees made similar statements. Human Rights Watch
interviews with Mamadou Ndiaye, January 21, 2010 (see background above); with
Amadou Tidiane Talla, president of ONG Gounass, Kolda, January 8, 2010; and with
Aliou Seydi, marabout, Kolda, January 7, 2010.

[68]
The minimum was three hours (only for meals) and the maximum was 10 hours on a
typical day, 16 hours on Thursday and Friday. Although it is difficult to fully
separate the two forms of begging, since they often occur simultaneously,
talibés said that they spend an average of just over five hours a day
begging for money, with the rest focused on meals. In their study, UNICEF, the ILO,
and the World Bank found that talibé children spend an average of six
hours a day begging. It is unclear whether the study included begging for food,
or simply for money, in its statistics. UNICEF, the ILO, and the World Bank, Enfants
mendiants dans la région de Dakar, p. 41.

[69]
Some marabouts provide a pause, or break, on Sundays, but this is in a
small minority of daaras.

[70]
Some talibés when interviewed first said that there was no “fixed
sum,” but when asked what happens if they brought nothing, they said that
they were beaten. Human Rights Watch then asked these talibés what
happened if they returned progressively greater sums (for example between 300
and 400 CFA), to which talibés responded that they would not be beaten.
Human Rights Watch considers such circumstances to constitute a quota, or “fixed
sum.” Only when a child said that there was absolutely no punishment for
failing to bring money was there deemed to be no quota. Of the 175
talibés interviewed, only two said that their marabout did not force
them to beg at all, and only three talibés who were forced to beg were
determined to have no quota.

[71]
The minimum was 0 CFA with a maximum of 1,000 CFA during the week and 1,500 CFA
on Friday.

[74]
Human Rights Watch interview with eight-year-old former talibé in Mbour,
Mbour, December 14, 2009. Other talibés similarly described their
marabouts selling rice that they returned. For example, Human Rights Watch
interviews with 12-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009
(marabout sells rice to community members); with 13-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009 (marabout sells rice at his boutique); and with nine-year-old
talibé, Thiès, January 24, 2010 (marabout bags and then sells
rice).

[75]UN
Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and
Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, adopted September 7, 1956, 226
U.N.T.S. 3, entered into force April 30, 1957, acceded to by SenegalJuly 19,
1979, art. 1(d).

[79]
Human Rights Watch interviews with a government official, Mbour, December 19,
2009; with Isabelle de Guillebon, director of Samusocial Senegal, Dakar,
November 10, 2009; and with Alioune Tine, president of RADDHO, Dakar, November
5, 2009.

[86]
Ibid., art. 19 (requirement of state to take all measures to protect the right
to physical and mental security) and art. 18 (requirement of parents and
guardians to take the best interests of the child into concern).

[88]
Human Rights Watch interview with Amadou Tidiane Talla, Kolda, January 8, 2010.
Islamic scholars in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau told Human Rights Watch that when
studies are taken seriously, a child of average intelligence should master the
Quran in three to four years. Human Rights Watch interviews with Helena Assana
Said, president of the National Community of Islamic Youth (Comunidade
Nacional da Juventude Islâmica, CNJI), Bissau, January 14, 2010; with
Mohamad Aliou Ba, village marabout, Geuro Yiro Alpha, Kolda region, January 7,
2010; and with Hameth Sall, daara inspector in the Ministry of Education and
department head at the Islamic Institute, Dakar, February 8, 2010. Yet Human
Rights Watch spoke with tens of talibés who, despite having studied in
daaras for up to eight years, had, when tested, yet to master even half of it.
Others who work closely with the talibés expressed similar frustration
over the lack of even Quranic studies in many urban daaras. Human Rights Watch
interviews with Issa Kouyate, president of Maison de la Gare, Saint-Louis,
December 3, 2009; with Alioune Tine, president of RADDHO, Dakar, November 5,
2009; with Mohamed Niass, marabout, Guédiawaye, November 21, 2009; and
with Aliou Seydi, marabout, Kolda, January 7, 2010.

[89]
UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 1, The Aims of
Education, 2, U.N. Doc. CRC/GC/2001/1 (2001).

[93]
The assistant Quranic teacher is one who often is both still a talibé working
to master the Quran or Sharia and a Quranic teacher to the youngest students. In
interviews, child talibés referred to them alternatively as a “grand
talibé” or as a “little” Quranic teacher.

[95]
Local translators and local humanitarian organization personnel suggested in
early meetings that talibés interviewed in groups would be less likely
to respond affirmatively to questions about corporal punishment, for fear that
one of their companions would tell the marabout, resulting in even more severe
punishment. Indeed, 88 percent of current talibés interviewed
individually told Human Rights Watch that they were beaten for failing to meet
the quota, compared to only 64 percent of those interviewed in groups.
Similarly, 86 percent of current talibés interviewed in centers, which
offered complete privacy and security, described being beaten, compared to only
71 percent of those interviewed on the street.

[96]
Human Rights Watch interview with 12-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009. A former talibé provided a similar testimony. Human
Rights Watch interview with 13-year-old former talibé in Dakar, Dakar,
November 12, 2009 (“The marabout would raise the electric cable and
before beating me he would say, ‘Are you going to bring the rest of the
money?’ If I said yes, then he might not beat me. If I hesitated, he
would always hit me. When he did not beat me the first time, I had to find the
rest of the sum the next day, or I would be beaten.”).

[97]
The one former talibé who said the beatings occurred without the
marabout’s knowledge told Human Rights Watch that the marabout lived over
20 kilometers from the daara, in a suburb of Dakar, and therefore did not come
to the daara daily. The former talibé believed that it was the grand
talibés, not the marabout, who required the quota and beat them for not
bringing it. However, after he and other young talibés told the marabout
what the grand talibés were doing, the grand talibés brutally
beat them once the marabout left—and continued to demand the quota. The
young talibés decided not to bring it up with the marabout again. Human
Rights Watch interview with 18-year-old former talibé in Dakar, Dakar,
December 15, 2009.

[98]
The child who said he was beaten every day told Human Rights Watch that he
refused to beg, resulting in daily beatings from the marabout. Human Rights
Watch interview with seven-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, November 30,
2009.

[99]
Human Rights Watch interviews with nine-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009; and with 15-year-old former talibé, Gabú,
Guinea-Bissau, January 12, 2010 (stripped down to underwear and held spread-eagle,
with a separate talibé holding each hand and foot while the marabout
would beat them).

[101]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 13-year-old former talibé in Saint
Louis, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009 (bound with rope while beaten); with eight-year-old
former talibé in Mbour, Mbour, December 14, 2009 (chained around the
ankles); and with 15-year-old former talibé in Dakar, Gabú,
Guinea-Bissau, January 12, 2010 (held down by other talibés).

[104]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 18-year-old former talibé in Dakar,
Dakar, December 15, 2009; with 12-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, December
1, 2009; and with a group of talibés, Guédiawaye, December 12,
2009.

[105]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 13-year-old former talibé in Saint-Louis,
Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009; with eight-year-old former talibé in
Mbour, Mbour, December 14, 2009; with 13-year-old former talibé in
Dakar, Dakar, January 26, 2010; and with 18-year-old former talibé in Saint-Louis,
Dakar, December 10, 2009. In the week after Tabaski, for example, marabouts
were absent from five of the 11 daaras visited by Human Rights Watch.

[106]
Human Rights Watch interviews with eight-year-old former talibé in
Mbour, Dakar, November 8, 2009; with 13-year-old former talibé in Saint-Louis,
Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009 (including sexual violence); and with eight-year-old
former talibé in Mbour, Mbour, December 14, 2009.

[112]
UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 8, The Right of
the Child to Protection from Corporal Punishment and Other Cruel or Degrading
Forms of Punishment (arts. 19; 28, para. 2; and 37, inter
alia), UN Doc. CRC/C/GC/8 (2006).

[115]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 19-year-old talibé,
Guédiawaye, November 23, 2009 (fellow talibé fell ill in 2007 and
died several days later); and with uncle of talibé who fell sick in
Dakar and died, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, January 11, 2010.

[116]
Fortunately, with pressure from the Ministry of Justice’s AEMO and Maison
de la Gare, a local humanitarian organization, the marabout moved the children
from the abandoned truck. One child interviewed from the daara said that they
had lived in the truck for the previous five years. Human Rights Watch
interview with 14-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009. This
was confirmed by the president of Maison de la Gare. Human Rights Watch
interview with Issa Kouyate, Saint-Louis, December 3, 2009.

[118]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 12-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009 (stating that there was no door to the talibés’
room in the daara, which meant it was extremely cold during the winter, with no
cover for the talibés); with 14-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009 (stating that he, and many of the other talibés, had to
sleep outside in the cold without cover); with eight-year-old former
talibé in Mbour, Mbour, December 14, 2009 (stating that they slept
directly on brick, with no mats and limited cover, and had little protection
from the cold); and with 11-year-old former talibé in Dakar, Dakar,
November 8, 2009 (stating that without cover or adequate clothing, the cold
season was miserable).

[120]
The marrainage programs, in which talibés are paired with a mother in
the community, are particularly noteworthy as a return to the traditional
practice of “collection” rather than “begging.”
Marraines provide meals for the talibés at set times, reducing
malnutrition and getting the talibé off the street from begging for
food. They also frequently assist with cleaning clothes and provide a place for
the talibé to wash himself. Many talibés also said that their
marraines helped provide money when they fell sick and sometimes bought them
clothes. Perhaps just as importantly, many marraines provide a strong emotional
connection for talibés who are far from their families and often in an
abusive situation. One marraine, who had helped the same talibé for five
years, said how the talibé comes over each evening to watch television
with her family while eating dinner, describing her relationship with him as
like another son. Another marraine, who leads the women’s community
organization that established the marrainage program in one city, said that for
young talibés particularly, marraines routinely check the child’s
back for severe beatings, and, in some cases, report the problem to the police.
Human Rights Watch interviews with a marraine, Guédiawaye, November 23,
2009; and with a marraine, Mbour, December 14, 2009.

[121]
See also UNICEF, the ILO, and the World Bank, Enfants mendiants dans la
région de Dakar, p. 42 (finding that only 29 percent of begging
children in the region of Dakar had cover for the cold season).

[122]
Human Rights Watch interview with 12-year-old former talibé in Mbao (a Dakar
suburb), Mbour, December 21, 2009. Other talibés described similar
overcrowing problems. For example, Human Rights Watch interviews with
11-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009 (saying that his daara
with 30 talibés had only one room, so many sleep outside); with
12-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009 (stating that his daara
with around 40 talibés had only two very small rooms, so the majority
sleep outside); and with 11-year-old former talibé in Pikine (a Dakar
suburb), Dakar, November 12, 2009 (relating that his daara with over 30
talibés had only one room, so he and others often chose to sleep
outside).

[124]
Human Rights Watch interviews with eight-year-old former talibé in
Mbour, Dakar, November 8, 2009; and with six-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
November 30, 2009. Indeed, one talibé said that the flooding of his
daara in Guédiawaye, a Dakar suburb, was so bad during the rainy season that
the talibés sleep outside in the rain. Human Rights Watch interview with
18-year-old talibé, Guédiawaye, November 23, 2009.

[126]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Abdullai Ba, marabout and imam, Saint-Louis,
December 2, 2009 (admitting that many of his children were forced to sleep
outside because of the overcrowding and sweltering heat in the rooms); with assistant
Quranic teacher, Mbour, December 19, 2009; and with Ibrahima Puye, marabout,
Guédiawaye, November 18, 2009.

[127]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Amadou Boiro, marabout, Guédiawaye,
November 19, 2009; with Demba Balde, marabout, Guédiawaye, November 21,
2009; and with Alu Diallo, marabout, Thiès, December 8, 2009 (though he
said that families in the community assisted the daara by occasionally bringing
water).

[128]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 11-year-old former talibé in Dakar,
Dakar, November 8, 2009; with six-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, November
30, 2009; and with eight-year-old former talibé in Mbour, Dakar,
November 8, 2009.

[131]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 14-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
December 3, 2009 (washes clothes at lunchtime at the marraine’s house);
with a marraine, Mbour, December 14, 2009 (started group of marraines, each of
whom has at least one talibé, who offer assistance including cleaning of
clothes); and with nine-year-old talibé, Thiès, December 9, 2009
(provided soap and water by aid organization).

[132]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 10-year-old talibé in Saint-Louis,
November 30, 2009; with 13-year-old former talibé in Saint-Louis, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009; and with 13-year-old former talibé in Dakar,
Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, January 11, 2010.

[133]
Human Rights Watch interview with 13-year-old former talibé in Touba,
Dakar, November 25, 2009. Another talibé related a similar story:
“My mom gave me new clothing one time when I was home … two shirts
and a pair of pants. The marabout never let me wear them at the daara. He took
them from me and gave them to his son. He had one son; he was a little younger
than me.” Human Rights Watch interview with nine-year-old former
talibé in Mbour, Mbour, December 14, 2009.

[138]
UNICEF, the ILO, and the World Bank, Enfants mendiants dans la région
de Dakar, pp. 42-43 (finding that in the region of Dakar a majority of begging
children are undernourished, with only just over half normally consuming
vegetables and only around one-fifth normally consuming fruits or meat,
insufficient for their development needs).

[139]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 13-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009 (“On Tabaski we had to beg for meat, not for money. The
marabout had two sheep. He and his family ate, and everyone in the community
came to prostrate themselves before him, receiving meat, but he did not give us
anything.”); with nine-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, November 30,
2009 (marabout had a sheep but talibés had to beg for food); with six-year-old
talibé, Saint-Louis, November 30, 2009 (same); and with five-year-old
talibé, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009 (same).

[144]
Human Rights Watch interview with 14-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
December 3, 2009. In several interviews, however, children with marraines noted
that food provision was still sometimes unreliable or insufficient. Human
Rights Watch interviews with eight-year-old former talibé in Mbour,
Mbour, December 14, 2009 (“I had a marraine, but some days I came and she
said that all had been eaten”); and with seven-year-old talibé,
Thiès, December 8, 2009 (“I have a marraine, but I am still often
hungry. Sometimes she does not have anything, other times it is not enough.”).

[145]
Human Rights Watch interviews with a marraine, Guédiawaye, November 23,
2009; with a marraine, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009; and with a marraine,
Mbour, December 14, 2009.

[153]
In addition to the approximately 30 percent of daaras in which marabouts did
provide assistance, talibés in around 10 percent of daaras said that
marraines or humanitarian organizations provided healthcare.

[154]
Human Rights Watch interview with 13-year-old former talibé in Dakar,
Dakar, November 12, 2009. An eight-year-old former talibé similarly told
Human Rights Watch: “When I was sick, I never saw anyone. The marabout
did not help me, and I had no money. I would just suffer. Malaria was the
worst.” Human Rights Watch interview with eight-year-old former
talibé in Thiès,
Mbour, December 14, 2009.

[159]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 13-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009 (“I am often sick with headaches and stomach problems,
but the marabout only helps us if it becomes very serious, for bad injuries or
if you are very, very sick. He does not help at all for stomach aches or
headaches.”); with 12-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, December 1,
2009; and with 18-year-old former talibé in Saint-Louis and Kaolack,
Dakar, December 10, 2009.

[165]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Mohamed Chérif Diop, talibé
program director at Tostan, Dakar, November 6, 2009; with Isabelle de
Guillebon, director of Samusocial Senegal, Dakar, November 10, 2009; and with
Moussa Sow, president of Avenir de l’Enfant, Dakar, December 17, 2009.

[166]
Questions about sexual abuse could only be asked in individual interviews
conducted in private, secure centers. In addition, to avoid re-traumatizing a
young child and to avoid concerns that young children often respond to cues of
interviews and offer responses even when not true, Human Rights Watch did not
pose any question regarding sexual abuse to children under the age of 10. These
two qualifications meant that only 39 children were asked about sexual abuse.

[167]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 13-year-old former talibé in Dakar,
Dakar, January 26, 2010 (repeated inappropriate touching); and with 11-year-old
former talibé in Kaolack and Mbour, Dakar, November 25, 2009 (victim of
male rape).

[170]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 10-year-old former talibé in Kaolack
and Mbour, Dakar, November 25, 2009 (marabout had left the oldest talibé
in charge of the daara while returning to his village); with 13-year-old former
talibé in Dakar, Dakar, January 26, 2010 (marabout lived in separate
house); and with 13-year-old former talibé in Saint-Louis, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009 (marabout had left oldest in charge of daara while returning
to his village).

[171]
Human Rights Watch interview with a social worker at local humanitarian
organization, Mbour, December 14, 2009.

[172]
Human Rights Watch interviews with a social worker at Samusocial Senegal,
Dakar, February 10, 2010; with a social worker at shelter for vulnerable
children, Dakar, November 5, 2009; with a social worker at Avenir de
l’Enfant, Rufisque, January 26, 2010; and with Issa Kouyate, president of
Maison de la Gare, Saint-Louis, December 3, 2009.

[173]
Human Rights Watch interviews with a social worker at Samusocial Senegal,
February 10, 2010; with a social worker at shelter for vulnerable children, November
12, 2009; and with a social worker at Avenir de l’Enfant, January 26,
2010.

[174]
Human Rights Watch interview with a social worker at Samusocial Senegal, February
10, 2010.

[176]
Human Rights Watch interviews with three directors of local humanitarian
organizations, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, January 2010 (one even paused for an
extended period and then said, “But that would involve homosexuality?”).

[177]
Draft version of study on Kolda region performed by a large research institute,
seen by Human Rights Watch (publication pending) (finding that 57 percent of
households in Kolda region, one of the poorest and most isolated regions of
Senegal, had at least one mobile phone).

[178]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 10-year-old talibé,
Guédiawaye, November 23, 2009 (sees parents each Tabaski); with
12-year-old former talibé in Dakar, Mbour, December 21, 2009 (saw
parents for Tabaski once); and with 13-year-old former talibé in Pikine,
Pikine, January 26, 2010 (parents visited him once in three years).

[179]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 12-year-old former talibé in Dakar,
Dakar, November 8, 2009 (spoke on phone once in two years); with nine-year-old
talibé, Saint-Louis, November 30, 2009 (spoke to parents a couple times
in four years); and with 14-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, December 3,
2009 (speaks to parents more regularly because an older brother in the daara
has a mobile phone). See also UNICEF, the ILO, and the World Bank, Enfants
mendiants dans la région de Dakar, pp. 40-41 (noting that child
talibés ages two to eight were most often those with no contact with
their families, and that contact was most often limited to phone).

[181]
Human Rights Watch interview with the father of a former talibé, Fouta
Toro area, December 2, 2009.

[182]
Human Rights Watch interviews with the father of a former talibé,
Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, January 12, 2010 (marabout never informed him the
first time that his child ran away); and with the father of a former
talibé, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, January 12, 2010 (marabout did not
inform him for one month, despite phone conversations, that his child had run
away).

[183]
Human Rights Watch interview with the father of a former talibé, Kolda
region, January 7, 2010.

[187]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Ibrahima Puye, marabout, Guédiawaye,
November 18, 2009 (has introduced football and wrestling in a daara assisted by
the humanitarian organization ENDA Tiers Monde); with Mohamed Nass, marabout
and imam, Guédiawaye, November 21, 2009 (hosts a football tournament on
the Day of the African Child at his “modern” daara with assistance
from the humanitarian organization Intermonde); and with Malick Sy, marabout,
Mbour, December 18, 2009 (provides for recreation every day at 5 p.m. in his
daara associated with the humanitarian organization Keur Talibé).

[190]
Human Rights Watch interview with 13-year-old former talibé in Dakar,
Dakar, November 12, 2009. A number of other talibés told similar
stories. For example, Human Rights Watch interview with seven-year-old former
talibé in Dakar, Dakar, November 12, 2009 (beaten for playing with
anyone from outside the daara); with 13-year-old former talibé in Touba,
Dakar, November 25, 2009 (beaten for playing); and with 12-year-old former
talibé in Dakar, Dakar, November 8, 2009 (beaten for playing).

[193]
For example, Human Rights Watch interviews with 13-year-old former
talibé in Dakar, Dakar, November 12, 2009 (stating that his daara went
from 15 talibés to three, before he ran away); with 15-year-old former
talibé in Dakar, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, January 12, 2010 (stating
that at least 15 talibés had run away before him); and with 13-year-old
former talibé in Dakar and Ziguinchor, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau,
January 11, 2010 (stating that four talibés had run away before him, in
addition to his group of four).

[196]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Malam Baio, director of SOS Talibé
Children, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, January 10, 2010 (noting also that of
the 334, 212 came from daaras in Dakar, 103 came from daaras in Casamance
(particularly Ziguinchor), and 19 came from daaras in other regions of Senegal);
with Miss Joanita, president of AMIC-Gabú, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau,
January 12, 2010 (records on hand were incomplete, but 62 former talibés
were returned between January and June of 2007); and with Laudolino Carlos
Medina, executive secretary of AMIC, Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, January 14, 2010.

[197]
International Organization for Migration, “Statistics on Assisted
Trafficking Victims since 2006,” unpublished document on file with Human
Rights Watch.

[198]
In 2007-2008, SOS Crianças Talibés encountered 32 former
talibés who had returned with no assistance all the way to Guinea-Bissau.
Human Rights Watch interview with Malam Baio, January 10, 2010.

[199]
Human Rights Watch interview with Moussa Sow, president of Avenir de l’Enfant,
December 17, 2009.

[200]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Isabelle de Guillebon, director of
Samusocial Senegal, November 10, 2009; and with a social worker at Samusocial
Senegal, March 1, 2010.

[201]
Human Rights Watch interview with 14-year-old former talibé in Dakar,
Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, January 12, 2010. A number of other talibés
similarly expressed that the worst beatings were for attempts to run away. For
example, Human Rights Watch interview with 13-year-old former talibé in
Kaolack, Dakar, December 15, 2009 (“The worst beatings were if you tried
to flee and then were captured”); and with eight-year-old former
talibé in Mbour, Mbour, December 14, 2009 (“The marabout beat us
badly all the time…. [But] the worst beating I had was after I ran away
and was found.”).

[204]
Human Rights Watch interview with 12-year-old former talibé in Dakar,
Bafatá region, Guinea-Bissau, January 11, 2010. Another talibé
described his group coming across a Senegalese man while begging in the morning
who told them that he would take the talibés to a center that afternoon
if they wanted to run away—an offer they accepted. Human Rights Watch
interview with 13-year-old former talibé in Dakar, Bafatá,
Guinea-Bissau, January 11, 2010.

[205]
Human Rights Watch interview with 13-year-old former talibé in Kaolack,
Dakar, December 15, 2009. Several other former talibés described similar
efforts to escape their daara. For example, Human Rights Watch interviews with
14-year-old former talibé in Lobodou, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009
(walked over 10 kilometers before finding a car to take him to Saint-Louis); and
with 10-year-old former talibé in Mbour, Dakar, November 25, 2009
(started walking from Mbour to Dakar before jumping secretly on the back of a
garbage truck traveling to Dakar).

[207]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 13-year-old former talibé who had
lived on the street for eight months, Dakar, December 15, 2009; with
18-year-old former talibé who had lived on the street for six months,
Dakar, December 15, 2009; and with 18-year-old former talibé in
Saint-Louis who had lived on and off the streets in Dakar for six years,
December 10, 2009. A leader of a street group with numerous former
talibés and a social worker with a humanitarian organization that
assists street children described similar numbers. Human Rights Watch
interviews with 27-year-old leader of one street group, Dakar, December 16,
2009; and with a social worker at Samusocial Senegal, Dakar, March 1, 2010.

[208]
Human Rights Watch interview with 27-year-old leader of one street group
consisting largely of former talibés, Dakar, December 16, 2009.

[210]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 27-year-old leader of one street group consisting
largely of former talibés, Dakar, December 16, 2009; with 13-year-old
former talibé who had lived on the street for eight months, Dakar,
December 15, 2009; and with 18-year-old former talibé in Saint-Louis who
has lived on and off the streets for six years, Dakar, December 10, 2009.

[211]
This is not to suggest that all street children in Senegal are former
talibés. However, the large number of children who run away from abusive
daaras each year significantly contributes to the number of children living on
the streets.

[214]
Human Rights Watch interview with Masso Balde, marabout, Saint-Louis, December
1, 2009. Numerous other marabouts made similar statements. For example, Human
Rights Watch interviews with Abdullai Ba, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009
(“Begging is to show the children what it is like to have nothing, to
show them that they must work hard, to show them the way of righteousness….
They are obliged to survive like this to know pain, in order to be truly
blessed later.”); with Alu Diallo, Thiès, December 8, 2009; and
with Celein Douda Faye, Guédiawaye, November 23, 2009.

[215]
For example, Human Rights Watch interviews with 12-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009 (also stating that marabout’s children went to French
school); with 13-year-old former talibé in Saint-Louis, Saint-Louis,
December 1, 2009 (also stating that marabout’s son went to a private
modern daara for which the marabout paid fees); with 12-year-old former
talibé in Dakar, Mbour, December 21, 2009; with 13-year-old former
talibé in Dakar, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, January 11, 2010; and
with 14-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009 (marabout’s
children do beg, but also attend a French school specifically for marabout’s
children). This is in contrast to the tradition of daaras, according to one
religious historian, in which even the sons of marabouts and village chiefs
were part of the ascetic practices. Human Rights Watch interview with Mamadou
Ndiaye, director of the Education Department at the Islamic Institute in Dakar
and professor in the Arabic Department at University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD),
Dakar, January 21, 2010.

[222]
See Anti-Slavery International, Begging for Change: Research findings and
recommendations on forced child begging in Albania/Greece, India and Senegal,
2009, p. 11.

[223]
The information in this table is based on interviews with talibés at
daaras in each of these four cities. The figure for the weekly demanded total
is calculated by multiplying the daily quota per talibé by the number of
talibés in the daara and the number of days per week that they begged.
The figure for the marabout’s annual income is calculated by multiplying
the weekly total, including sums of money and the value of rice and sugar, by
52. Human Rights Watch interviews with 10-year-old talibé, Thiès,
January 24, 2010; with 11-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, December 1,
2009; with 14-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009; with
15-year-old former talibé in Dakar, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, January
12, 2010; and with 12-year-old talibé in Guédiawaye, November 23,
2009.

[225]
Human Rights Watch interviews with 18-year-old former talibé in Dakar,
Dakar, December 15, 2009 (stating that the marabout more often lived at a home
in a Dakar suburb, rarely coming into the daara, though he also had a home near
the daara); and with 10-year-old talibé, Saint-Louis, November 30, 2009
(stating that marabout had a home for his family back in Fouta Toro, where he
often visited, in addition to his residence at the daara).

[226]
Human Rights Watch interview with a group of talibés, Guédiawaye,
December 12 and 20, 2009.

[227]
Human Rights Watch interview with a director of a local humanitarian organization,
Guédiawaye, December 12, 2009. The director said that the marabout is
very powerful and that the state was afraid to bring any action against him as
a result.

[228]
The first meeting was confirmed the day before the arranged time, and the
second meeting was confirmed that morning. When the marabout was called at the
arranged time for the first meeting, he said that he had guests at his house in
Mbao and would be unable to make it. When the marabout was called at the
arranged time for the second meeting, he did not answer and turned off his
phone, so that subsequent attempts went straight to voicemail.

[229]
Human Rights Watch interview with Aliou Seydi, marabout, Kolda, January 6,
2010. A marabout in Guédiawaye
similarly described: “These marabouts build huge buildings in Kolda and
Guinea-Bissau with the money. They are part of a group that does not honor the
real Quran.” Human Rights Watch interview with a marabout,
Guédiawaye, November 19, 2009.

[233]
One marabout blamed the government, who he said tasked “people who do not
know anything about the daaras” with inspection, leading the government
to “not do anything.” He suggested that if someone like himself was
tasked—if there was a delegated marabout from each neighborhood
responsible for overseeing the daaras in that neighborhood—”it
would be easy to identify and to shut down the bad daaras. The exploitation
could end easily.” Human Rights Watch interview with a marabout,
Guédiawaye, November 21, 2009.

[237]
Human Rights Watch interview with Helena Assana Said, Bissau, Guinea-Bissau,
January 14, 2010. Said also said that these imams have publicly stated that
parents should send their children to Portuguese schools, in addition to
learning the Quran.

[242]
For a discussion of a number of seminars and workshops—and
government-organized working groups—between 1976 and 1982, for example,
see Ndiaye, L’Enseignement arabo-islamique au Sénégal,
pp. 217-229, 310-317.

[248]
Human Rights Watch interview with a high-level official in the Ministry of
Family, December 15, 2009. The program director of PARRER similarly told Human
Rights Watch that regulation was not possible at present because it was “necessary
to experiment first” with methods of assistance, curriculum, and other
issues. Human Rights Watch interview with Cheikh Amadou Bamba Diaw, Dakar,
November 25, 2009.

[250]
Human Rights Watch interview with an official in the Ministry of Family, Dakar,
December 15, 2009.

[251]
Human Rights Watch interview Aida Mbodj, former minister of the Family and
current vice-president of the National Assembly, Dakar, February 11, 2010.

[252]
See US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005: Senegal,” March 8, 2006 (citing
two such arrests according to statistics provided by the government of Senegal);
US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2006: Senegal,” March 6, 2007 (citing
three arrests); and US State Department, “Trafficking in Persons Report
2009,” June 16, 2009 (citing two arrests for 2008).

[253]
Human Rights Watch interviews with an official in the Ministry of Justice,
Kolda, January 6, 2010; and with an official in the Ministry of Justice, Mbour,
December 18, 2009. A humanitarian worker in Mbour indicated that there had been
such an arrest following a particularly gruesome beating by one marabout in
2008. Human Rights Watch interview with a social worker for a local humanitarian
organization, Mbour, December 14, 2009. See also Pape Mbar Faye,
“Maltraitance à Mbour : Un maître coranique
déféré pour avoir torturé son talibé,”
WalFadjri, June 11, 2008, http://www.seneweb.com/news/article/16853.php (accessed February 5, 2010).

[256]
Human Rights Watch interview with an official in the Ministry of Family, Dakar,
December 2009. An official in the Ministry of Justice made similar statements. Human
Rights Watch interview, Dakar, January 2010 (“The whole problem of the
talibés exists because of the non-application of the law, the law
against begging. The Senegalese government does not apply the law, because the
country is dominated by the power of the marabouts (‘force
maraboutique’).”).

[257]
Human Rights Watch interview Aida Mbodj, former minister of the Family and
current vice-president of the National Assembly, Dakar, February 11, 2010.

[264]
Human Rights Watch interviews with directors of international and local
humanitarian organizations, Dakar, December 2009 and January 2010.

[265]
Human Rights Watch interview with Emanuel Fernandes, focal person of the
National Committee on the Trade of Persons and official in the Institute of
Women and Children (Instituto da Mulher e Criança,
IMC), Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, January 13, 2010 (stating that prior to 2008 and
the creation of the Committee, there were only two humanitarian organizations
that worked and raised awareness on this issue).

[266]
Human Rights Watch interview with August Monte, commissioner of the civil
police force for the region of Bafatá, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau,
January 11, 2010. The Gabú regional police commissioner told Human
Rights Watch that, from his experience, it is more often a designated
intermediary, generally a former or older talibé, who is tasked with
moving the children across the border. He stated, “He is recruited, this
former talibé, and then he sensitizes the village about the virtues of
the marabout, about the possible education—then he recruits the children.
Less often, the marabout comes to recruit for himself, looking to exploit
children in the same way that he was likely exploited.” Human Rights Watch
interview with Ibrahima Mane, regional commissioner of the civil police force,
Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, January 13, 2010.

[280]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Laudolino Carlos Medina; with UNICEF child
protection officer, Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, January 15, 2010; and with Helena
Assana Said, president of CNJI, Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, January 14, 2010 (noting
also that the CNJI had identified the daaras where it happened, tried to
sensitize marabouts to at least reduce begging hours, and were starting a
marrainage program where talibés would sleep with a host family, in
addition to receiving food and other assistance).

[282]
The government of Guinea-Bissau, marred by instability and constant changes in
personnel in state institutions, has spent the last decade stagnated in its
efforts to harmonize domestic laws with international treaty obligations. UNICEF,
which has been working with the government, expressed optimism that real
progress would be made this year, including on legislation against forced
begging. Human Rights Watch interview with UNICEF child protection officer,
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, January 15, 2010. However, directors of two humanitarian
organizations in Guinea-Bissau that work with the talibés expressed less
optimism, given the lack of progress over the last decade to reform
Guinea-Bissau’s laws and the hesitance of the government to interfere
with religious leaders. Human Rights Watch interviews with directors of local
humanitarian organizations, Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, January 2010.

[283]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Emanuel Fernandes, January 13, 2010; with
official in the Ministry of Interior, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, January 11,
2010; and with regional official, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, January 11,
2010.

[285]
Human Rights Watch interviews with UNICEF child protection officer, January 15,
2010; with an international humanitarian organization official working closely
with the government on education policy, Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, January 15,
2010; with Helena Assana Said, January 14, 2010; and with Laudolino Carlos
Medina, January 14, 2010.

[287]
In Guinea-Bissau, a daara is a school where children primarily and in some
cases only learn the Quran, whereas a Bissau-Guinean madrasa involves Quranic
studies, Arabic, and often Portuguese and other state school subjects.

[288]
Draft version of study on Kolda region performed by a large research institute,
seen by Human Rights Watch (publication pending) (finding also that the average
household size in Kolda was 10.5 people).

[289]
Human Rights Watch interview with the father of three talibés, Kolda
region, January 7, 2010. Another father of two talibés said that whether
his male children stayed at home and went to state school or were sent to live
in a daara depended, in part, on the success of the harvest when the child came
of school age. Human Rights Watch interview with the father of two
talibés in Saint-Louis, Fouta Toro area, December 2, 2009.

[294]
Human Rights Watch interview with a village chief and father who sent a child
to a Dakar daara, Guero Yiro Boucar, Kolda region, January 7, 2010. Other
parents made similar statements. Human Rights Watch interviews with the mother
of former talibé, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, January 11, 2010
(telling Human Rights Watch that her youngest son, age three, would not be
going to Senegal to learn the Quran after the experience of her older son, who
was returned after running away from his marabout’s physical abuse); and
with the father of a former talibé, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, January
12, 2010 (“It was only when the child returned here that we learned the
full truth about the difficulties in Senegal”).

[296]
Human Rights Watch interviews with the father of one talibé in Saint-Louis,
Fouta Toro area, December 2, 2009; with the father of one talibé in Saint-Louis,
Fouta Toro area, December 2, 2009; and with the mother of one current
talibé and one former talibé in Dakar, Gabú,
Guinea-Bissau, January 13, 2010.

[297]
Draft version of study on Kolda region performed by a large research institute,
seen by Human Rights Watch (publication pending) (reporting also that 30
percent of parents believed that the child would be in equal living conditions
and 31 percent believed that the child would be in better living conditions).

[298]
Human Rights Watch interview with eight-year-old former talibé in Mbour,
Dakar, November 8, 2009. Many talibés related similar stories. For
example, Human Rights Watch interviews with 13-year-old former talibé in
Touba, Dakar, November 25, 2009 (beaten by father after he ran away from the
daara, forcing him to run away to the streets of Dakar); with 13-year-old
former talibé in Saint-Louis, Saint-Louis, December 1, 2009 (beaten by
father after he ran away from the daara at age nine; knowing that he would be
returned to the daara, he ran away from home); and with 18-year-old former
talibé in Saint-Louis, Dakar, December 10, 2009 (about to be returned to
daara after running home at 11 years old, he ran away again, forcing him to
live on and off the streets in Kaolack, Mbour, Thiès, and Dakar over the
last seven years).

[301]
Human Rights Watch interview with Mohamed Aliou Ba, village marabout, Guero
Yiro Alpha, Kolda region, January 7, 2010. The brother of a marabout who left
Kolda for Dakar, as well as a government official in Kolda, described similar
influences on marabouts’ migration. Human Rights Watch interviews with the
father of Dakar talibé and brother of marabout, Kolda region, January 7,
2010 (“The way that the government and NGOs do their work, the money
never leaves Dakar—so the marabouts go there. That was the perception of
my brother who left [his village in Kolda]. If you are going to change things,
the money must go to the population directly, it must go to the base.”);
and with a government official in the Ministry of Social Affairs, Kolda,
January 8, 2010 (“The marabouts think that if they have a large number of
children around them, that the state or NGOs will assist them. They have seen
it happen with other marabouts.”).

[303]
Human Rights Watch interviews with Ibrahima Puye, marabout, Guédiawaye,
November 18, 2009; with Oustas Pape Faye, marabout, Guédiawaye, November
19, 2009; and with Malick Sy, marabout, Mbour, December 18, 2009. A 2008
internal review of one humanitarian organization’s large-scale
talibé program, shared with Human Rights Watch, likewise found that some
marabouts who received their assistance had abandoned the practice of begging,
while others had at least reduced hours.

[305]
Human Rights Watch interview with former employees of an international
humanitarian organization, Dakar, November 20, 2009.

[306]
Internal review of humanitarian organization’s talibé program, 2008,
unpublished document on file with Human Rights Watch. In the same internal
review, the organization noted that its assistance may indeed have resulted in
an increase in the number of talibés sent to specific daaras, though it
believed that the overall increase was likely to have occurred regardless and the
organization’s actions only impacted the relative distribution of
talibés among daaras rather than the whole number. It is clear, however,
that when organizations focus on urban daaras, the relative distribution
changes in favor of urban daaras over village daaras—bringing children to
where begging is widespread as opposed to largely nonexistent.

[312]
Human Rights Watch interviews with officials in international and local humanitarian
organizations in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, November 2009 through January 2010.

[313]
Human Rights Watch interview with the director of a local humanitarian
organization, Dakar, December 2009.

[314]
Human Rights Watch interviews with UNICEF child protection officers in Senegal
and Guinea-Bissau, December 2009 and January 2010.

[315]
Human Rights Watch interview with the director of an international humanitarian
organization, Dakar, November 11, 2009.

[316]
UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, acceded to by Senegal
July 19, 1979, art. 1(d). Accession has the same legal effect as ratification.

[317]
See also Anti-Slavery International, Begging for Change: Research findings
and recommendations on forced child begging in Albania/Greece, India and
Senegal, 2009, p. 3 (finding same legal conclusion).

[326]
It is oddly inconsistent, however, that the Trafficking Protocol would exempt
cases that satisfy the definition under the Supplementary Convention on
Slavery, given that it specifically cites to the Supplementary Convention.

[339]
UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 8, The Right of
the Child to Protection from Corporal Punishment and Other Cruel or Degrading
Forms of Punishment (arts. 19; 28, para. 2; and 37, inter
alia), UN Doc. CRC/C/GC/8 (2006).

[340]
See also UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, “Consideration of
Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Concluding
Observations, Senegal,” CRC/C/SEN/CO/2, October 20, 2006, paras. 39, 60,
61 (noting Senegal’s insufficient laws and implementation, including
related to the talibés).